“I’d better get to hunting,” Cathaline said. “There’s a pair of roofcreepers spotted in Kensington; some solicitor put a bounty on them. I should get there before everyone else hears.”
“Good luck,” Thaniel said. “And watch out for their tails.”
“Didn’t I teach you that?” Cathaline grinned as she left.
“You are hunters? In London?” Alaizabel asked, her interest piqued as she sipped her brandy.
“We’re wych-hunters, miss,” Thaniel replied.
“Oh,” she said, a strange tone in her voice. She looked across at him, the firelight picking out her small, babyish features even under the straggle of hair, the grime and the sallow complexion that the fever had given her. “You have been very kind to me,” she said, fiddling with the small silver chain on her wrist.
Thaniel blushed, turning to gaze into the fire to disguise the heat on his cheeks and taking a small mouthful of his drink. “No gentleman could have done any less,” he replied.
There was a moment of silence, counted in heartbeats. “Why can’t I remember?” she asked quietly.
“Perhaps the fever is muddling your brain,” said Thaniel. “As the fever passes, so will the confusion.”
“I hope so,” she replied. She frowned suddenly, as if struggling to recall something that remained just out of reach. “I remember... scattered things. I remember my parents’ faces. But not where I live. I know this city, I know the streets and alleys... so why can I not remember where I live?”
“It will come, miss,” said Thaniel. “In the meantime, I have left buckets of hot water, should you wish to bathe.”
Alaizabel lifted a strand of her straggly blonde hair and looked at it closely. She looked at the back of her hands, turning them before her face. An expression of dawning realization rose on her face. Until that moment, she had not been aware that she was dirty; more than that, she was filthy.
“Tell me,” she said, distantly. “Tell me how you found me.”
So Thaniel told her, and as he did so he found himself assessing the girl who sat before him, hunched and fevered and shivering slightly. She was a strange one, for sure. He wondered about her, where she came from, who her parents were, how she grew up. Was she like him, lonely and driven? Or had she a happy home, with many friends, filled with laughter?
He found himself observing her as he explained what had happened, noting details about her. Her dress, for one. Tattered and torn and muddied, but no doubt it was at least moderately expensive. The thin silver chains on her wrist and around her throat; unornamented and simple, but still beyond the means of a scullery maid or a workhouse girl. Despite her sickly appearance, she had not wanted for food, and she showed no signs of lice in her hair. Her voice, too; her vowels were cut-glass, her words perfectly pronounced, the product of good breeding or elocution lessons.
When he was finished, she was silent for a time. “I must bathe,” she said at length.
She found the water in the bathroom, as Thaniel had promised, three buckets of a temperature just shy of boiling and one of ice-cold. The cool air was full of steam, and the single small window was misted over, the dark green tiles of the walls dripping with condensation. A deep tub lay against one wall, and there was a full-length mirror fastened to another, its silver surface running with rivulets of warm dew. There was also a dressing table with ointments and oils, and she was surprised to see a set of clothes laid out on it, neatly folded. Lifting them up, she saw that they consisted of a blue-and-pearl-coloured dress, some hair grips, stockings and shoes. Thaniel’s mother’s, she guessed, and briefly wondered when she would meet the lady of the house to thank her.
She walked over to the mirror and wiped it; when that did little good, she found a cake of soap, dipped it in the cold water and rubbed it over her hands. When she wiped the mirror this time, the condensation receded. She found a towel and, using the soap and water, she scrubbed her face clean. Yes, she knew this face. At least she had that; she was not a stranger to herself. She took off her filthy and tattered dress and looked at herself; her body she knew as well, familiar with every curve and mole and freckle. There were bruises on her ribs, and her lower back ached abominably. She turned around and looked over her shoulder at her reflection, and her heart jumped in her chest.
There was something there that she did not know. Its presence seemed alien to her, unfamiliar and sinister. A tattoo, a circular tattoo at the base of her back. She stared at it for a long while. It was difficult to tell what it was supposed to be depicting. A stylized image of a many-tentacled thing, seen in three-quarter profile, etched in simple blue-black ink. The sight of it disturbed her. She did not like having it on her; the skin surrounding it seemed to want to crawl away from it. It spoke darkly to her subconscious, and brought up feelings of dread.
She shuddered and looked away from it. Its very presence on her body was shaming to her. It was not proper or decent to have any kind of tattoo there on her body. She could not remember the circumstances that had attended its creation, but she was not sure that she wanted to.
She poured the bath, making it a little too hot in her haste to get clean. As she lowered herself in, the blood rushed to her head and she felt giddiness swarm up towards her.
Careful, Alaizabel. You are still weak.
But weak from what? Was her illness somehow connected with her madness and amnesia? And with the horrific nightmares that she half-recalled from her sleep?
Softly, she began to cry. What was happening to her? Who was she? Who was Alaizabel Cray?
Without craning, she could not see the single window in the room, above and to the right of her. There was nothing out there but darkness, anyway, set as it was on the upper storey of the house; and the steam from the hot bath had turned it opaque. Therefore, she did not see an imprint slowly resolve itself in the window, a spread hand, as if it were laid against the glass from the outside, dissipating the interior condensation where it touched. And though there was nothing outside that was visible to human eyes, another imprint slowly cleared next to the hand; the shape of a jawbone and an eyebrow, such as might be made if a face was pressed to the window, looking down at the girl in the tub.
When Alaizabel came downstairs, washed and dressed, her hair combed and neat, Thaniel was lost for words; this scarcely seemed the same girl that he had brought home two nights ago. That one had been haggard and drawn, wasted and mad-eyed. The girl who stood before him was almost doll-like, with smooth, unflawed features like a child’s; her pale green eyes showing no tint of illness. Her blonde hair, once tangled, had been combed straight and tamed with clips, so that it fell about her shoulders in corn-coloured waves. She wore the blue-and-pearl dress that he had left for her in the bathroom, and it fitted her perfectly.
He got to his feet, raking his hair back, and bowed deeply. “My lady,” he intoned. “I had no idea there was a princess under all that dirt.”
She laughed lightly and blushed. “And I had no idea there was a scoundrel underneath that gentleman.”
“You do me too much honour,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“I feel better now,” she said. “I think the fever is going.”
Her voice was still weak, but it did little to mar the transfiguration. Thaniel found his eyes drawn to her more frequently than was proper.
“Would you like to sit?” he asked. But she shook her head.
“I am tired. I must rest, I think. I just came... to thank you. For looking after me.”
“I am only glad I found you before you were hurt,” he said.
“This dress... is it your mother’s?”
“It was,” he replied. “But she is gone, like my father. Like all things precious.”
She was saddened a little by his tone. “Some precious things last for ever,” she said.
The fire snapped.
Thaniel looked over his shoulder at her, his expression strange. “You are my guest here, Miss Alaizabel, until you are well. I want you to
think of this house as your home.”
She smiled.
“We will find your parents,” he said. But Alaizabel, oddly, felt nothing about that.
“Goodnight,” she said, and left.
She woke with a small cry, to darkness—her pulse racing and her brow and back soaked in sweat. She looked around wildly, not knowing where she was, only that she was pursued by some vast, dark, unseen thing that yowled and moaned and wanted her. Then sanity returned, gripping and steadying her, racing to assemble the jigsaw of her thoughts.
She was in Thaniel’s bedroom. It was night. She had been asleep, dreaming. A nightmare, a terrifying nightmare, but that was all it was. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself.
The room was chilly and full of darkness, as she lay listening to her heartbeat decelerate. The black iron lamp-posts outside shone through the window, casting dim yellow shapes across the bare wooden floor. At night, the room seemed larger somehow, as if the walls were breathing in. One of the talismans that hung from the roof chimed softly as it stirred.
I forgot to ask about them, she thought wearily, as the final tatters of the nightmare fluttered away from her and tiredness began to return.
She had noted the talismans for the first time when she had retired after her bath. They had the temporary look of things that were not ordinarily there. The rest of the room was neatly arranged; a chest of drawers, a dressing table with a comb and an old book on it, the bed itself, a polished wood floor with a single rug. There was little decoration in Thaniel’s room; it showed nothing of his character. It was merely a room.
But the talismans... now they were interesting. There, a fox’s brush hung above the window, a tiny phial of something tied around it and wrapped in a long string of odd-smelling wooden beads. She’d found a coil of rope beneath her bed, but the intertwining strands were dyed red, white and amber, and tiny bells were tied at various points along its length. Just beneath her door, little symbols had been carefully drawn in some kind of black, ashy paste across the doorway. Another small mobile of tiny bells made of various metals hung above her bed.
She shucked the blankets and stirred, her nightgown cool on her skin. It was a soft purple silk, elegant and luxurious, and fitted her perfectly. She had found it laid by her bed when she had retired last night. Thaniel’s mothers, she thought, and felt a little sad.
It was then that she realized her fever had gone. She sat up, testing to see whether the giddiness would return. It didn’t. The bedclothes still smelled of illness, an acrid scent of unhealthy sweat, but she felt fine.
There is that to be thankful for; at least, she thought, and lay back again.
She listened to the creaks of the house, the settling boards and pipes, and became suddenly aware of being terribly, horribly alone. Not just now, not just because the house was empty; instead, it was something that swamped her and promised to stay. She was entirely adrift, with no port to call home. She felt a deep sinking in her stomach, and she wanted to cry.
Perhaps she slept, perhaps not. It was difficult to tell. Skimming like a stone over the surface of awareness, she could not tell whether she had truly dreamed or whether she had only drowsed until her eyes opened again with a jolt of alarm.
Something was up there, on the ceiling.
Her chest froze in panic. The room had darkened, she was sure of it, the shadows thickening until they choked out the light, and the temperature had fallen to the point where her breath panted out in rapid clouds. But even in the blackness, she could see the deeper shadow, the vast thing that stood at the foot of her bed and bent over her, pressing against the ceiling, a clot of congealed dark that oozed malevolence. It was impossibly tall, an undefined, faceless, looming presence, motionless, paralysing her with fear.
It is not there! something inside her screamed, her rational mind beating frantically at her whirling panic, fighting to cage it again. It is but a shadow, just a shadow!
But it was there, and it radiated evil so thick that she felt she might gag on it; a thing with no shape and no form, yet she could feel its eyes, staring at her unflinchingly, regarding her with a dread gaze.
She was hardly even aware of her hand scrambling for the matchbox that lay on a table next to the bed, kept there for lighting the oil lamp nearby. She did not dare look away from the swarming blackness above her, fearing that the moment she did so, it would descend on her like a shroud, and she—
The crack and hiss of the match broke the spell, and a small glow of light drove back the dark. She took the glass from the oil lamp and shakily touched the flame to the wick, then held it up without even replacing the glass, thrusting its light to the ceiling.
There was nothing there.
She sat up in the bed, panting. Was i gone? Had it ever been there at all?
She’d been so sure...
Fearfully, she slid out of bed. The cold raised goosepimples along her flesh, beneath her nightgown. She placed the glass on the oil lamp to diffuse the glow and spread it wider, then turned it up to full brightness and checked the room. She looked behind the chest of drawers, under the bed, and finally turned the key in the door to lock it.
Night chills, she told herself. That is it could be. Perhaps I am not as fully recovered as I thought. She slipped back into bed, replacing the lamp next to her on the table. For a time, she lay awake, staring at the ceiling where the tiling had been.
Something happened to me, she thought. Something happened, and that is why I cannot remember; and that is why I was ill, and that is why I was mad. But I am getting better I am!
Suddenly feeling idiotic, she tipped the glass of the oil lamp and blew it out. The darkness slunk back into the room, and settled. She watched the ceiling for a time, but all she saw was blank white plaster. Steadily, she began to feel herself descend towards sleep once more.
The stairs creaked—a long, low moan.
She was instantly awake again, her eyes wide open, alert. That was no natural night sound, no clank of cooling pipes or sigh of flexing boards.
The next stair creaked, quite deliberately.
Someone was coming up.
It took several seconds for the realization to sink into her, during which time the slow, heavy tread ascended up two more stairs. There was a terrible purpose in those footsteps, something unnatural that she could barely place, and an awful feeling of foreboding clutched at her, accompanied by a terrible sense of vulnerability.
It is Thaniel, Thaniel or Cathaline. It must be. There is no reason to panic so.
But somewhere inside her, deep and instinctive, she knew that whoever or whatever made those footsteps was coming for her.
The room had cooled further, and the darkness had deepened again. She pulled the blanket tight to her collarbone and shuffled backwards so that she was sitting against the headboard, and searched about the room with her eyes for something that might serve as a weapon.
The dressing table!
There were drawers there; there had to be a letter knife in one of them. But she was frozen. She did not dare leave the imagined safety of the bed to cross the room.
The intruder had reached the landing now, and she knew suddenly why it was that she had thought the footsteps unnatural. They were wet This was not the clump of boots, but the soft slap of something like fins or webbed feet. And accompanying it was a laboured wheezing, like the phlegmy breath of an old, old man.
Somehow, it was that sound that got her moving, made her slide the blanket aside and put her feet down on to the rug. She did not dare light the lamp in case it alerted the intruder, hoping against hope that whatever it was outside did not know she was there. Silently, her body so tense that it was painful, she padded across the room. Her shadowy reflection crept towards her from the other direction, approaching from the far side of the dressing-table mirror. She was surprised at how normal she looked, when her insides were seized with utter and complete terror.
The slapping feet came closer, approaching slowly, and there
came also the long dragging sound of something heavy. Alaizabel cast a fearful glance at the door, fancying that the thing outside was already opening it, and then tugged one of the dressing-table drawers as quietly as she could manage.
Locked. She tried another drawer, trembling, and in her haste she let it grind along the inside of the dresser, making a scrape that was deafening in the glowering darkness.
The feet ceased their advance. Somehow, the silence was worse than when she could hear them. She could smell salt, even taste it on her lips and tongue. The room was freezing now, so cold that she began to shiver violently, and every breath was like a plume of white fog.
Like the cold, dark depths of the sea, she thought, and she realized that dew was clinging to her, moistening her nightgown and making her fine blonde hair stick to her face in lank, chill tentacles. Juddering uncontrollably now, she looked down into the drawer. There was a knife there, not a letter knife but a curious thing with a wavy blade.
The door thundered at her, shaking violently, deafeningly. She screamed, grabbing the knife and scrambling back to the bed, where she knelt facing the door. It rattled against its frame as if something was pounding it from without, clattering and thumping until Alaizabel screamed again to shut out the noise.
How was it that Thaniel had not heard such a din? How was it that he was not awoken and alerted?
Unless it was Thaniel that was outside her door.
Then came silence. Alaizabel watched, panting, shivering and wide-eyed, the knife held before her in a futile threat against anything that might try to come through the door. Her skin was clammy, her hair a straggle like kelp.
The key began to slowly turn in the lock.
Terror-stricken, Alaizabel stared at the circle of the keys grip as it rotated, millimetre by millimetre, each one bringing her closer to the moment when there would be nothing between her and whatever waited outside. She could not move.
The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray Page 4
