‘What’s a familiar?’ asked Stella.
Jem looked over his shoulder. ‘It’s a little thing. You can’t see it, but it can see you. It might be right beside you, but you wouldn’t know. Sometimes you can hear her talking to it, inside the sweetshop. But there ain’t nobody there. Nobody that you can see, anyways. They say she found it in Boggart Wood, and she caught it, and now it runs errands for her.’
Stella felt the back of her neck prickle, but Strideforth laughed and said, ‘That’s all nonsense.’
‘It ain’t lucky to joke about things like that, Master Strideforth,’ Jem said seriously. ‘You’ve got to be careful. And I reckon the monster’s back, whatever you say. Because them three sheep din’t just wander off. They got took, that’s for sure. Took by something.’
‘But not by a monster,’ said Strideforth.
Stella said, ‘You don’t know. There might be a monster. There might be anything. We saw something swimming in the lake today.’
‘That was just a big fish. Maybe an eel,’ said Strideforth.
Jem grinned. ‘There’s big ’uns down in that lake. Grown big since the old gent died. They’d be great-great-grandfather fish by now.’ He laughed. ‘I’d go fishing there, I would. I’d catch something big. But Granny says she’ll clobber me if I go near the lake. Granda says when the old gent was alive fifty years back, there used to be a rhinoserry and giraffes and a crocodrill here in the garden. All kinds of foreign creatures. He saw them when he was a little lad. I wish I’d seen them. Twenty servants, the old gent had, Granda says, and more for parties. They could see the fireworks and hear the music all the way in the village. The old gent went all round the world, he did. And he came back here to live when he was old. But he was right strange, from being in foreign parts for so long. Granda says he used to dress up like a Turk and drive two of them black-and-white foreign horses. You know, stripy like humbugs.’
‘Zebras,’ said Stella.
‘Zebras.’ Jem nodded. ‘And wild. There was three men in the forge back then, and all together they couldn’t shoe any of ’em. Them zebras wouldn’t have it. Not them. Kicking and biting and all. But they’re all gone, fifty years back or more. There ain’t nothing like that left here now. Nothing at all. Excepting them parrots, and them bats, and them peacocks, screeching all the time.’
‘Do you know about someone who stayed here, about ten years ago?’ Stella asked. ‘A lady? With two little babies?’
Jem shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Miss. That was afore I was born. This house’s been empty for years an’ years. People used to come sometimes, but they din’t stay long. I’ll ask Granny if you like?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Stella.
‘I will then.’ He picked up the basket. ‘Anyway, I’m off, afore she catches me. I’m meant to be weeding the cabbages.’ He laughed. ‘G’afternoon, Master Strideforth, Miss Stella, Miss Hortense.’ They heard his boots clattering and his cheerful whistling as he crossed the yard outside.
‘It’s all just stories, you know,’ Strideforth said, as he carried the loaf of bread and the can of milk away to the larder. He came back and added, ‘There are no such things as monsters or ghosts. That is certain. Jem should not believe in all that nonsense.’
Stella imagined the monster, hiding in the dark wood, gnawing on the bones of the missing sheep.
Strideforth sat down at the table and opened his Latin primer again. He stared at the page for a few minutes, and then drew some more steam pipes in the margin. He hummed to himself for a bit, rocked his chair back and looked at the pipes that snaked across the ceiling, hissing and clanking. He said, ‘They go all around this house. Some of them are hot, but most of them are cold. The furnace burns a lot of coal. The heat must be going somewhere.’ He slammed his Latin primer shut. ‘I’m just going to have a look,’ he said, and left the room.
Stella stared at her letter. It was extremely short, and the Aunts would certainly disapprove of it. She gazed into space for several minutes, but could not think of anything else to write. Hortense was still drawing the thistle. Anya was draped across the back of her neck, sleeping. Henry was snoring on the mantelpiece. The clock ticked. The heating pipes clanked. Raindrops pattered against the windows.
Stella wrote:
It is raining today.
After a few moments, she added:
Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow.
Suddenly, the door banged open and Strideforth came bounding back into the room. ‘Stella, have you finished your letter? I’ve found something to show you.’
‘What is it?’
He grinned. ‘It’s a surprise. You’ll see. Bring that photograph with the babies in it. Come on.’
Stella dipped the pen into the ink and wrote:
Yours dutifully,
Stella Montgomery
She blotted the letter quickly, folded it, pushed it into the envelope and wrote the address on the front:
The Misses Montgomery
Hotel Majestic
Withering-by-Sea
She licked the stamp, stuck it on and tucked the letter safely under a heavy black stone.
Nine
Even in the daytime, the house was shadowy. Stella followed Strideforth along dusty passageways past dark rooms with shuttered windows and rows of glass cases containing mouldering insects and broken birds’ eggs.
They passed the portrait of Wilberforce Montgomery, and Stella stopped to have another look at him. His little black boot-button eyes reminded her of Aunt Deliverance, but that was the only resemblance because his expression was rather cheerful. He was sitting in the little Egyptian summerhouse, down beside the lake, surrounded by books and plants and animals. Behind him, swans glided between tidy clumps of water-lilies, and beyond that, the neat garden sloped steeply up towards Wormwood Mire. The painting was cracked and green with mildew, but Stella could see a group of kangaroos and a camel grazing beside an ornate fountain and a giraffe standing in a flowerbed. Parrots and monkeys perched on clipped hedges, decorative urns and the branches of the trees.
The other paintings along the passageway were of ships and foreign towns and tropical fish and porcupines and toucans. There were several more of Wilberforce Montgomery. In one, he was standing proudly with his arm around a rhinoceros. In another, he was driving a smart carriage pulled by zebras along a busy city street. In a third, he was riding a yak and smiling off into the distance. He wore an enormous furry hat, decorated with beads and feathers. Behind him, towering mountains reached up into the sky.
Strideforth felt a heating pipe. He followed it along the wall, crouched down and rapped it with his knuckles. ‘Cold,’ he said. He stood up. ‘Come on. It’s upstairs.’
In the entrance hall, the gold wallpaper gleamed in the shadows. Strideforth led the way up the curving staircase, and then up a second flight of stairs and along a passageway lined with doors. He tapped the heating pipes. ‘These ones are all cold too,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand. The heat must be going somewhere. It’s all bedrooms up here.’ At the end of the passage, he pushed open a door. ‘Look. It’s in here.’
The room was a nursery, with whitewashed walls and bars on the windows. A rusty fireguard stood in front of the empty grate. A narrow iron bed was covered with a dustsheet. There were two small cots, a white-painted wardrobe, a wooden rocking chair and a wooden screen covered with pasted pictures of flowers and animals and children. Water dripped from the ceiling and made puddles on the cracked linoleum.
In a corner of the room was an old-fashioned perambulator. Strideforth pointed. ‘It’s the one in the photograph, isn’t it?’
Stella gasped. ‘Yes.’ She compared it with the little photograph. ‘Yes, it is.’
He grinned. ‘I thought so.’
The leather was torn and the iron spokes of the wheels were rusty. Stella touched the wooden handle. Had she sat in here with Letty? Two babies, bundled up in quilts and blankets, as their mother pushed them around the overgrown garden?
> ‘Do you remember it?’ asked Strideforth.
Stella shook her head sadly. ‘No. I don’t remember anything.’
She looked around the room. It was shabby and neglected. Had she once slept here?
She pulled open the wardrobe door. A clutter of rubbish lay on a bottom shelf. She crouched down and poked around. Mouldy cleaning rags, an empty medicine bottle and a few painted building blocks.
Beside one of the windows was the wooden rocking chair. Strideforth gave it a push, and it creaked back and forth.
Something flickered at the back of Stella’s mind. Sunlight shimmering …
‘I remember that chair, I think,’ she said slowly. ‘I remember someone sitting right there.’
‘They must have been waiting for someone to come, that is certain,’ said Strideforth.
‘Waiting? Why?’
‘You would sit here and wait for a visitor. That’s the drive, down there.’ He pointed out of the window. ‘You would sit right here and watch for people to arrive.’
Stella pushed the dusty curtain aside, leaned on the windowsill and looked out. Raindrops trickled down the glass. Below, the drive curved around towards the front door of the house. Strideforth was right. From here, you would see anyone who arrived.
Stella pushed the curtain further back. ‘Look,’ she said. Hidden in the corner of the windowsill was a little wooden box.
She wiped dust from it. It was about three inches square and decorated with a twining pattern of flowers made out of tiny pieces of wood of different colours, red like autumn leaves, glossy chestnut brown, gleaming black and as pale as moonlight. Stella polished it with her sleeve. Little mother-of-pearl butterflies were scattered in between the flowers. They glinted as if they were fluttering.
It was quite beautiful.
Curving across the lid of the box in silver letters was the name Patience. Above the name, almost hidden amongst the flowers and butterflies, were a tiny silver star and a tiny silver moon.
‘Patience,’ Stella whispered. She traced the letters, her finger trembling. ‘Patience. My mother. This must have been hers.’
‘What’s inside?’
Stella held her breath and opened the lid.
‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. The box contained only a dried flower and a tiny strip of curled paper. She picked up the flower, but it was so fragile it crumbled into dust. She uncurled the little piece of paper. It had faint writing on it. She read out, ‘Crossroads. Midnight. I will wait.’
Strideforth said, ‘A message. What crossroads, do you think? Midnight is a strange time to meet someone.’
Stella read the message again and shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
She closed the box and ran her finger along the silver letters again. She had never held anything that had belonged to her mother. She stroked the smooth wood. Her fingers found a little round hole at the back, hidden in the pattern.
Strideforth examined it. ‘It’s a keyhole,’ he said. He opened the lid and looked inside. He turned the box over and tapped it underneath. ‘A secret compartment, do you think? There must be a key somewhere.’
They looked along the windowsill. Stella shook the curtains, dislodging years of dust and several large moths. They searched the floor. Stella peeled back the cracked linoleum and spied something gleaming, wedged tight in the gap between two floorboards.
‘I’ll get it out.’ Strideforth opened his pocketknife. ‘Father gave us some money to spend in London. I bought this.’ He showed Stella the knife and selected a short, pointed blade. He poked it into the gap between the floorboards. ‘It has fifteen different blades. There’s one to take stones out of horse’s hooves, and one to open tins, and one to sharpen pencils, and one to curl a moustache, and one to adjust a lady’s corset in an emergency. It’s very, very useful. There.’ He grinned and passed Stella a tiny silver key.
It fitted the keyhole. Stella pushed it in and turned it. The key went around and around, clicking, like winding a watch. She opened the lid of the box and tinkling music poured out. A whispering, melancholy tune, like raindrops falling on wet leaves. Stella caught her breath. She had the strangest feeling, as if she had heard this music before. A long time ago.
Something stirred at the back of her mind, like a distant, flickering light.
Sunlight shimmering …
All at once, she remembered sitting on the floor of the nursery. Right here. With her sister. They had a little wooden doll each. Her doll had a pink dress, and her sister’s had a yellow one. Her sister was chewing her doll’s head. Soon it would have no hair left at all.
Their mother sat in the rocking chair beside the window. She was thin and pale and sad, and she wore a grey gown. She sat and rocked and sang along to the whispering, tinkling music, and looked out the window.
She was crying.
Stella held her breath. In her memory, she saw the sunlight slanting in through the window. The shimmering light seemed to pass right through her and her sister, as if they were floating, hazy and insubstantial as smoke. Stella blinked, watching the glinting specks of dust dancing in the sunlight.
The musical box wound down. The image shone in her memory, fading as the music slowed.
The music stopped. The memory glimmered and dissolved and was gone.
Raindrops ran down the window.
‘They were here,’ Stella said. ‘I remember them. My mother. And my sister. And me.’ She looked around the empty, shadowy room. ‘I remember. We were right here.’ She wiped a tear that had trickled down her cheek.
Strideforth said, ‘You’re sad.’
‘No, not really.’ Stella smiled. ‘I wish —’ She stopped. She was not sure what she wished. She thought of her mother. Sitting in the rocking chair, looking out at the drive. Watching and waiting and crying. She remembered playing in the sunshine, with her sister. With Letty.
Stella put the silver key and the little photograph inside the musical box. She touched the three tiny faces with the tip of her finger, and gently closed the lid.
Ten
Strideforth said, ‘Why was your mother here, anyway? It is strange to be staying in a big empty house, don’t you think?’
Stella nodded, turning the musical box over in her hands. ‘It is strange.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’m here now because my Aunts sent me away. They were very angry.’
Strideforth said, ‘Father sent us away.’ He paused. ‘He was angry too.’
Stella looked around the neglected nursery and thought about what Ada had said at the railway station. Had her mother been sent to stay in this empty house because she had done something wrong? Was that why she had been crying?
Strideforth said, ‘And I think Father must still be angry with us. Because he has not sent us a letter. Not one. There is a ship every month. If he had written to us, we would have the letter by now. Two letters. Maybe he’s forgotten us.’
Strideforth looked miserable. Stella patted his arm and tried to think of something comforting to say. ‘Sometimes letters are late. Or they get lost.’
He nodded, sniffed and rubbed his face with the back of his hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what else we can find. Perhaps you will remember something more.’
Stella pushed the musical box into her pocket and they searched the nursery for clues. Strideforth crawled under the bed. Stella looked along the windowsills, behind the curtains. Strideforth scrabbled around and came out backwards, covered with dust, clutching only a bent teaspoon and a dead beetle. Stella pushed the perambulator across the room, clambered up onto it, balanced unsteadily and groped around on top of the wardrobe. Strideforth tried unsuccessfully to prise up a floorboard with his pocketknife. He pulled the fireguard aside, climbed into the grate and looked up the chimney. He emerged, covered with soot, sneezed and said, ‘Nothing.’
They wandered back along the passageway and searched the other bedrooms. They pulled open wardrobe doors and peered under beds. Stella found a shoe with a tarnished buckle
and a chamber pot containing three dead snails. A drawer of a dressing table was warped shut and Strideforth forced it open with his pocketknife. Inside were a glass button, a silver lid from a bottle and a broken fan made of ostrich feathers. In a wardrobe, Stella found several old-fashioned coats and a bonnet decorated with mouldy silk violets. Strideforth put on the bonnet. It came down over his eyes. He opened the fan and waved it around in an elegant manner, shedding several feathers. Stella giggled.
In one of the bedrooms was a glass dome containing an arrangement of flowers made from tiny seashells. On the mantelpiece was a marble statue of a naked gentleman wrestling with a dragon. In another bedroom, they found a stuffed fish with goggling eyes swimming through a forest of waterweed in a dusty glass tank.
Outside, the rain was becoming heavier and the wind was blowing in gusts. Something rattled against the roof.
Strideforth investigated the bathroom. ‘If the furnace was working properly, we might have hot baths up here,’ he said, inspecting the enamel tub, which held several inches of stagnant green water. He tapped the pipes and lifted the heavy mahogany lid of the lavatory and peered inside. The glazed china bowl was painted with flowers and leaves. He pulled the chain, and there was a clanking sound, but nothing happened. He climbed up and poked around in the cistern.
‘Do you remember anything?’ he asked, as he clambered down, dripping slightly.
Stella looked along the shadowy passageway. ‘No. Nothing at all,’ she said.
‘Let’s try downstairs,’ said Strideforth. ‘We should look in all the rooms. You might recognise something.’
They went back down to the entrance hall.
Strideforth pushed open a pair of large doors. ‘Here’s the ballroom. Come and see.’ He led the way into a huge, echoing room. The walls were decorated with gilt and mirrors, like an oriental palace. Wavering reflections glimmered in the shadows. An enormous, dusty chandelier hung overhead, draped with cobwebs.
Wormwood Mire Page 6
