The Steps up the Chimney

by William Corlett

  William started to climb, holding the torch in one hand and supporting himself on the upper steps with the other. Above him the roof was formed by the steps which moments later would be beneath his feet. The walls pressed close, the air was dank and stale. Pausing to adjust his grip on the torch, he was overwhelmed by the dull, throbbing silence that surrounded him. It was a little bit like being buried alive, he thought, and he started to climb again with more urgency, pushing the feeling of panic to the back of his mind with the renewed activity.

  Later, as he rounded yet another twist of the stairs he found his way blocked by a narrow door, the wood black and heavily embossed with iron nails. At first, the iron latch was hard to move and then when it did it clicked so loudly that the sound was deafening in the unreal silence.

  As William leaned his weight against this door, it swung slowly open on creaking hinges. Stepping through, he hoped to find that he had reached the top of the tower, but instead ahead of him more of the same stairs twisted on up into the dark. He had only taken a few steps when a resounding slam made him look round in alarm. He returned and found the door closed once more across the stairwell. Shining his torch over the rough surface of the wood he saw that there was no latch on the side of the door that now faced him.

  He was trapped.

  Mary woke up suddenly. One moment she had been dreaming about being a dancer who hadn’t learned the right steps and the next, she was wide awake in the bedroom at Golden House.

  Alice was sitting on the side of her bed, pulling on a sock.

  ‘What time is it?’ Mary asked, looking at the dark night sky outside the window.

  ‘Ssssh!’ Alice hissed. Then she whispered: ‘It’s quarter past six.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mary whispered.

  ‘Will isn’t in his room.’

  ‘He’s gone without us!’ Mary exclaimed, immediately bad-tempered. ‘The little beast. I knew he would. I knew it. Right, that does it . . .’

  ‘We’ve got to find him, Mary,’ Alice cut in, interrupting her sister’s anger.

  ‘Find him?’ Mary sneered. ‘I don’t care where he is. I hope he gets really lost.’

  ‘No, Mary. You don’t. Not really.’

  ‘Yes, I do. He promised us . . .’

  ‘But he’s in danger, I know he is. We’ve got to find him . . .’

  ‘Serves him right if he is in danger,’ Mary said. ‘He’s gone off alone to find the secret room and, what’s more, he’s broken another Solemn Vow. It’s typical of him – just because he’s the oldest he thinks he can do whatever he likes . . .’

  ‘Mare,’ Alice pleaded, ‘he shouldn’t go there on his own. It isn’t safe. You said yourself there’s something really funny about this place. Please come with me . . .’

  And she looked so desperate and so miserable that Mary hadn’t the heart to say no.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, climbing out of the bed and immediately shivering. ‘Oh! It’s freezing in here.’

  ‘Get dressed then,’ Alice told her and she pulled the covers off Mary’s bed, just in case she had any idea of returning to its warmth.

  ‘Where are we going to look anyway?’ Mary said, dressing quickly to escape the ice cold of the bedroom.

  ‘Up the chimney, of course.’

  ‘I don’t want to go up the chimney,’ Mary wailed in disgust. ‘It’ll be filthy.’

  ‘What does that matter?’ Alice said and already she was running out of the room.

  With a sigh Mary finished dressing. I’ll have to follow her, she thought, otherwise she’ll only get into trouble as well as Will, and that’ll make things even more complicated. What a nuisance they are . . .

  As she followed Alice down the dark stairs, Mary wished that William hadn’t commandeered the only torch.

  William had taken his belt off and was trying to slide the prong of the buckle between the side of the door and the frame in the hope that he could move the latch on the other side. It was a good idea and it kept almost working, but because the door opened towards him and there was no handle or knob on his side he was unable to get a proper hold.

  Eventually, bothered and frustrated by failure, he turned and proceeded up the spiral stairs until he reached a narrow landing with a door at the end. Pushing this door open, he stepped through it into a long moonlit loft.

  ‘Well, come in. Come in,’ a voice said, rather crossly, from somewhere in the shadows.

  This took William so by surprise that instead he stepped backwards out of the room into the dark of the landing. A moment later a soft whirring sound, followed by a draught and something cold brushing his forehead, made him turn tail and run helter-skelter down the stairs, dropping his torch as he went and thus plunging himself into complete darkness.

  Alice and Mary reached the door on the stairs just as William arrived at the other side of it and, feeling in the dark, Alice found the latch and pushed it open in time to be met by William running in the opposite direction. They collided and Alice fell backwards, hitting Mary who was a few steps behind her. Mary steadied herself against the stone wall and managed to stay on her feet, but Alice collapsed, with William on top of her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mary hissed.

  ‘I’m being suffocated,’ Alice’s muffled voice announced.

  ‘Alice?’ William said, trying to stand up.

  ‘William? Is that you?’ Mary whispered, feeling in front of her and contacting the muddle of bodies that was sorting itself out into William and Alice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ an irritable voice asked. It seemed to come from behind them, higher up the stairs.

  ‘Who said that?’ Alice whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ William moaned. ‘There’s somebody up there.’

  ‘Oh, do come up, if you’re going to,’ the voice said again. And then it added a strange ‘ooo-ooo’ sound, as though whoever was speaking had suddenly had a fit of the shivers.

  ‘William, who is it?’ Mary whispered, her voice quaking with fear.

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ the voice replied. ‘Do come up. I won’t eat you. I’ve had my supper and you’d be far too tough.’

  ‘You’re not to lock us in then,’ William called into the darkness, trying to sound brave.

  ‘Lock you in? Of course not. It is perfectly easy to open if you simply know how. Are you coming? I’ll give you some light . . .’ and, as the voice said the words, the narrow stairwell was suffused with a pale, silvery glow.

  In this half light the children looked at one another. It would be possible for them to hurry down the stairs and away from the strange voice for they were standing in the open doorway.

  William felt that the decision ought to be unanimous. He didn’t want to be responsible for leading the girls into danger. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to go himself. He therefore whispered:

  ‘What should we do?’

  Alice pulled a face and said nothing. But Mary, to the surprise of the others, called out indignantly:

  ‘It’s all very well you telling us to do this and do that. We don’t know who you are. It might be dangerous.’

  ‘But you were going to come up, weren’t you? That’s why you’re here,’ the voice said in a patient tone. ‘What is the difference now?’

  ‘The difference,’ said Mary firmly, ‘is that you are there, and we don’t know who you are.’

  ‘Would it really make any difference if you did know?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yes, it would,’ Mary replied.

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ the voice said, crossly, and a moment later there was a strange, dull beating sound, followed by silence.

  ‘Hello?’ William called. The silence remained.

  ‘Let’s go back to bed,’ Alice said.

  ‘No,’ Mary said, pushing past her. ‘You two go, if you want, but I’m going up.’

  ‘You’re very brave, Mary,’ William told her as she squeezed past him.

>   ‘I’m not really,’ she whispered. ‘But if he’d been going to do something awful . . . well, he’d have done it by now, wouldn’t he? And besides I couldn’t go back to bed now. The curiosity would kill me. Come on, you two. I don’t really want to go on my own.’

  ‘All right,’ Alice said in a small, reluctant voice. ‘But William, you must hold my hand very tight and promise not to let it go.’

  In the half light, William reached down the stairs and took hold of the small hand. He was as glad of it as his sister was of his and wasn’t surprised when Mary reached down to him from above and held firmly on to his other one.

  So the three of them, hand in hand, mounted the steep stairs until they reached the moonlit chamber at the top.

  15

  Meeting a Magician

  ‘HELLO?’ MARY CALLED, making the word sound like a question. ‘Are you there?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Alice, pulling at William’s hand. ‘If there’s no one here, we may as well go.’

  But Mary had already moved into the room, and was looking round in the half light.

  ‘I wonder where it comes from,’ she said. ‘The light, I mean. There aren’t any windows . . .’ Then, as she turned to look at William and Alice, she gasped.

  William, thinking that she’d seen someone standing behind him, shot forward into the room, dragging Alice, who was still clinging to his hand, with him.

  ‘What?’ he exclaimed, failing totally to hide the panic he was feeling.

  Alice cowered behind her brother and put her hands over her eyes – a trick she had first adopted when she was very small.

  ‘Look,’ Mary said, pointing above their heads.

  William turned and Alice, still leaning against him, turned with him.

  ‘What is it, Will? What is it?’ she asked in a frightened voice.

  ‘The owl,’ William replied, quietly. ‘It’s all right, Alice. It’s quite safe to look.’

  The door through which they had entered was set into a stone turret of what would once have been the roof of the tower. Beside it the brickwork of the chimney disappeared through the slanting gable. Where the roof joined the chimney, the two round windows that they had seen from the ground jutted out, one at the front and the other at the back. They were bigger than they had seemed from ground level, and each of them had a circular reflecting mirror fixed to the brick chimney in a direct line with it. These mirrors were on swivels, and could be turned so that they would reflect the light of the sun or the moon. Each mirror also had a candle holder fixed to it – presumably so that, if there were no sun shining or no moon, it would still be possible for light to be directed out through the circular openings in the roof.

  And yet it wasn’t these windows with their elaborate mirrors that had prompted Mary’s cry of surprise.

  It was the owl.

  He was perched on the candle sconce of the window at the front of the house – the one that looked out over the drive and the high bank of woods. He was silent and still; staring solemnly out through the window, with the moonlight shining in the mirror behind him, so that he seemed to be ringed by silver light. The window was half open, tilting inwards at the top and outwards at the bottom, from a central point on each side of the circular frame. A faint breeze stirred through the room and fanned their faces. It moved the soft downy feathers on the bird’s chest. It was a cold breeze and it made the children shiver.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ Mary said, without really meaning to.

  ‘Ssssh!’ the bird hissed and he raised one talon, as though in a gesture.

  Alice pulled in closer to William and he put an arm round her shoulders.

  Then, as they continued to watch, the light of the moon faded and the room grew dark.

  ‘Wait,’ a voice whispered.

  In silence the children peered at the great bird, now no more than a vague shadow, seated on the sconce above their heads. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, a few birds began to sing out in the snow-covered woods and little by little the darkness thinned into the first glimmers of early dawn.

  ‘Ooo-ooo,’ the owl fluted, loud and thrilling to the children, standing so close beside him.

  Majestically he spread his huge wings and, flapping them, almost as if he were shaking them out, he hopped from the sconce to the sill of the window. For a moment they saw him, poised against the dawn and then, without looking back, he was gone, sailing away out of their sight down below the line of the roof.

  ‘I haven’t got long,’ a voice behind them said, making them swing round in unison.

  There in front of them stood a man in a long black cloak. He was bareheaded and he leaned heavily with one hand on a thin silver pole. It was the sort of rod you see bishops and other high-up clergymen carrying in church. But this one didn’t have a cross on top of it; instead it had two dragons winding round each other with their heads thrown back and their mouths open. From the centre of each mouth a tiny silver tongue protruded with a forked tip.

  As the light increased in the room, so the children were able to see him more clearly. He was almost bald and what little hair remained was red so that the man’s head seemed to be surrounded by a circle of fire. But it was his eyes that were the most startling thing about him. They were a very pale blue-grey, almost white, but flecked with gold, so that they appeared to flash and blaze like the embers of a fire in the half light. And all the time they stared with such unblinking directness, as though they could see right into each of the children’s minds.

  Alice gripped hold of William’s hand and moved closer to him, and Mary, who had been brave, now took a step back, showing her own nervousness.

  For a long time there was silence in the room, as the man stared at each of them in turn, closely inspecting them. Then he nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘You know who I am?’ he asked, quietly.

  ‘A magician,’ Mary whispered.

  ‘Yes, that certainly,’ the man answered her. ‘But more than that. Who am I?’

  ‘Stephen Tyler,’ William mumbled, finding it almost impossible to speak at all.

  ‘Good. You remembered,’ the man said. And he nodded again, slowly and thoughtfully.

  ‘Who?’ Alice asked William, but without for a moment taking her eyes off the man.

  ‘The man at the railway station. The one I told you about,’ William whispered.

  ‘The one you didn’t think existed,’ the man now said.

  ‘Well, I did,’ Alice said, feeling braver. ‘Only you disappeared before we got a chance to see you.’

  ‘You are Alice,’ the man said, silencing her. ‘And you’ – he swivelled his eyes round – ‘are Mary.’

  Mary nodded and swallowed, uncomfortable under the cold stare.

  ‘It took you a long time to get here,’ the man now said and as he did so he walked slowly away from them towards the end of the room.

  ‘We’ve only been here a few days,’ William protested.

  ‘Of course,’ Stephen Tyler said. ‘And yet I have been waiting for longer than that.’

  ‘Do you live up here?’ Mary asked, looking round at the cluttered room which was now taking shape in the growing light.

  ‘Live? Here? Don’t ask questions,’ the man snapped. Then he seemed to regret his irritation and he smiled at her. ‘Wait, and you’ll discover everything you need to know. Questions can be a waste of time. Not the right questions, of course. The right questions save time. So – ask the right question and you’ll get an answer.’

  ‘But how will we know what is a right question and what isn’t?’ Alice asked.

  The man looked at her and only smiled.

  ‘We’ll know – if we get an answer,’ William said, still staring at the man.

  ‘Good,’ the man said, smiling and looking pleased. Then he stared at William closely and frowned. ‘You’re younger than I thought,’ he said and he shook his head. ‘Well, no harm in that.’ Sometimes he seemed to be talking more to
himself than to them. ‘Now, you are going to be here during the coming year? Is that right?’ he asked, speaking to them all.

  ‘Off and on,’ William replied. ‘We have to go away to school. But during the holidays we’ll be here, I expect.’

  ‘Our mother and father have gone to Africa,’ Mary volunteered.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Stephen Tyler waved a hand, silencing her. ‘The boy told me. Mmmh.’ As he made this long, thoughtful sound he turned slowly looking at them once more under furrowed brows. ‘Are you constant, you three children?’

  ‘That’s our name,’ Alice cried.

  ‘But are you really constant?’ the man insisted. ‘Are you resolute in mind and in purpose? Are you loyal and trustworthy? Well, are you?’ This last question he fired at Alice, and as he did so he jutted his head at her, peering into her eyes, making her dodge back behind William as though she’d been hit.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just our name. Constant is our name.’

  ‘But how did you come by it?’ Stephen Tyler asked her.

  Alice shrugged and pouted her lower lip. She had an awful feeling that she was about to cry.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, tremulously. ‘We got it off our father, like most people get their names.’

  ‘But your family must once have earned the name. To be called “Constant” is a great tribute. I can only hope that you are still worthy of it. To be constant means to be true and loyal. To be constant means to honour the vows that you make at all times.’

  As he finished speaking he turned slowly and looked at William with his flashing, searching eyes.

  William couldn’t look into those eyes. He hung his head with shame, remembering how he had broken the Solemn Vow he had made with his sisters.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I did try to wake them, but they were asleep and Mary told me to go away. She did, honestly.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, Will,’ he heard Mary whisper and he was glad to feel her hand take his and hold it in a reassuring grip.