He was hardly ready to give up, though. “Old Belch told me how it works. A little bit, anyway,” he muttered. He had seen Lord Alwyn use it too, at their first meeting in this very room. Closing the Book again, he laid his hand on the rough texture of its cover and said, “My name is Marcel.”
Nothing happened at first, and he wondered whether the Book would teach him anything at all, but then it began to glow a comforting golden-red. With his hand still in place, Marcel spoke again. “I am an orphan.”
Instantly the glow ceased and his hand was flung aside. The Book unfurled its pages, fanning rapidly and fluttering the flame of the meagre candle until it reached the second-last page. Here, it wrote his words.
I am an orphan.
Marcel’s smile almost split his face in two. “See how it works?” he said excitedly. “Truth and lies. I’m not an orphan. The Book knows it somehow, even though I don’t.”
He didn’t bother with his hand this time but simply leaned over the open pages. “I want to know the true story of who I am.”
The Book closed without delay and sent out its golden glow. They watched expectantly but it did nothing more. Marcel’s fingers worked unconsciously at the ring Lord Alwyn had forced him to wear, waiting for a further sign.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bea after they had waited a full minute.
“Who am I?” Marcel asked stiffly, but this time the yellowish tinge ceased and the book simply lay there, making no response at all.
He thought back to what Old Belch had told him and slowly he began to understand. “It can’t tell me who I am. That’s not what it’s made to do. It might contain the most powerful magic in the world, but it can only do one thing: judge what is true and what is not.”
He discovered that he was right when the Book glowed in response.
“Why is it called the Book of Lies, then?”
“You’ve seen the way it works, Bea. Every word written in this book is untrue. No wonder they call it the Book of Lies! And look at it, almost full.”
Suddenly he realised what this meant, and his heart sank inside his chest. “It’s hopeless. This book doesn’t have my life on its pages. It can’t tell me who I am or where I come from. That would be the truth, and all of this is…” He flicked his hand disdainfully at the cover. “You risked your life to get it for me, but it’s nothing but lies.”
Bea had stopped listening, to stare intently at the doorway leading into the hall. Then she murmured, “Someone’s coming.”
“Hide the Book!” Marcel whispered urgently, passing it to her and shooing her into the pantry. The sound of slow footsteps grew louder. He expected to hear Albert or Mrs Timmins herself, but instead the silence was broken by a girl’s voice. “Who’s there?” she called curtly.
“It’s Marcel,” he replied.
The girl came closer until the candle’s pale light caught her face. It was Nicola. “What are you doing down here?” she asked suspiciously.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he answered quickly, but to his horror he heard the pages of the Book of Lies flap and unfurl somewhere in the pantry behind him. Nicola had heard the sound too and glanced over his shoulder, looking for the cause.
He distracted her by asking, “How did you know I was down here?”
“I was awake and I heard someone trip going down the stairs. I waited for a while but they never came back up. I’m surprised that strange old man in the tower hasn’t come down to check as well. He’s going to make sure you stay here, that’s for sure,” she said, rather unkindly. “Not like me,” she added with a bitter chuckle as she walked to the back door and looked out into the night. “They can’t wait to get rid of me. Already tried once.”
“I heard you were sent back.”
“Sent back!” she snapped indignantly. She spun round to face him again, making no effort to keep her voice down. “I ran away. They treated me like a slave, those people. I had to do everything, cook and clean and wash all their filthy clothes. And the boys in the family! Stank like pigs, all three of them, and they wouldn’t move out of the way unless I kicked them.”
Marcel didn’t doubt that she had done just that. The candle threw light playfully on to her long hair, which she had loosened for sleep. It didn’t look quite as brushed and perfect now. She looked better this way, he decided.
Nicola noticed him stare at her. “Is it right what the other children are saying?” she asked, in a more sympathetic tone this time. “Don’t you have any memory at all, not even of your parents?”
“Yes. I mean, no. What I mean is, my life before I arrived here has gone from my head. Vanished.”
She thought about this for a moment, running her eye over Marcel as though inspecting him for the first time. “That doesn’t seem fair,” she said, with an unexpected hint of concern for his plight. “At least I can remember my parents. Well, my father, anyway.”
Marcel was touched by the melancholy in her voice, and before he knew it he had whispered, “Not your mother, though?”
Nicola sighed, and her shoulders sagged a little as she told him, “She died when I was born, so I never knew her. I only have what others told me about her. I’ve even had to make up what she looked like. Long hair like mine, only the colour of straw and much more beautiful. I’ve always imagined her like that.”
She stopped suddenly. “Did you hear something?”
“No, nothing,” said Marcel quickly, though he had indeed heard a sound, not the rustling of pages this time but a muffled voice. It had come from the pantry where the Book was. “Go on, Nicola. You were talking about your mother,” he urged, hoping that if she kept speaking she wouldn’t take any notice.
Nicola seemed eager to tell her story, so she ignored the noise. As she started up again Marcel was surprised at how much her face changed. Her pretty features softened in the candlelight and her voice swapped its sharp-edged hostility for a gentleness that matched her memories. “My father talked about her all the time. He called her his angel and then he’d say that I reminded him of her. He wanted me to marry a rich landowner when I grew up. He didn’t expect me to help around the house, of course. That was for servant girls, he said. He made sure I had everything I wanted.”
“…everything I wanted,” said a voice.
“What was that?” she asked, more certain this time. “You spoke. You copied what I just said.”
“No, I…” Marcel didn’t know what to say, but he had to keep Nicola from discovering Bea and the Book of Lies.
If Nicola’s memories of her parents had opened a door to a different girl, now that door was slammed shut by a new anger. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you, just because I’ve told you something about myself. Well, if you’re going to be like that…”
Before she could unleash her fury, Bea’s little figure emerged from the darkness. She held the Book open in her arms.
“Bea, no!” Marcel whispered.
“It’s all right, Marcel,” she said calmly. “Nicola should see this and so should you.”
“What’s she doing hiding in the pantry?” Nicola demanded hotly. She would wake the whole house soon, if they weren’t careful. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t sleep either, Bea. What’s going on here, and what’s so special about that book?”
Bea did her best to ignore Nicola. With her eyes glued to Marcel’s, she said, “I think we have found a way to use the Book after all.”
“Show me,” he urged her.
As she laid the Book on the kitchen table again, she turned to Nicola. “Keep talking. Tell us about your father.”
Nicola stared at the Book suspiciously. “Is this some sort of trick? You haven’t got the rest of the orphanage in the pantry laughing at me, have you?”
When neither Marcel nor Bea would respond to her goading, she didn’t know quite what to do: stomp away to bed or stay and see what this creeping around was all about. “All right,” she said finally, and after taking a breath she started up again. “We had a large house. My fa
ther did well, selling fine cloth to rich ladies.”
The Book began to speak in unison with her, matching every word as she uttered it, but they waved her on, and despite a sceptical glare she kept speaking. “But gradually, the rich women stopped coming to his store. They didn’t like the colours and complained about his prices. Father himself became ill, and when he died there was nothing left, no money to support me, no one to care for me.”
The Book of Lies hadn’t missed a word. What was more, Marcel and Bea recognised the voice itself. “It’s Lord Alwyn. This was what happened on the night you arrived,” said Bea excitedly.
“What’s going on?” Nicola came closer, leaning over the Book, reaching down with one wary hand but pulling it away at the last moment. “What sort of book is it?”
“It’s the Book of Lies,” Marcel told her.
“I don’t understand. It said what I said, at the very moment I said it. How could it do that? There’s magic here, isn’t there? What does it mean?”
Marcel could barely believe it, but he had an answer for her. “It means this book has your life written in it, or at least what you think is your life. It’s all lies, you see. Not your real life at all. Your name probably isn’t even Nicola.”
“You’re mad, both of you,” but as she spoke she looked directly at Marcel. He had been named Robert, for a few hours at least. Then he had become Marcel, and suddenly that wizard and his beast in the tower had come out of hiding. It was enough to make her ask again, “What does it mean?”
“It means you’re like me. Your real life was wiped from your mind, just like mine was, except that Lord Alwyn gave you a new one in its place.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Nicola defiantly. “My mother. She was beautiful…”
“Your real mother might still be alive,” said Marcel.
At this, the Book of Lies started to flip and fan its pages, but Marcel wouldn’t be distracted. “Don’t you see, Nicola? You’re not an orphan after all. You don’t have to go to another family, like that one down in Fallside. You have your own family.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” said Nicola, putting her hands to her forehead. “The memory of my parents is all I have now that I’m stuck here, alone, with no one to love me.”
“But don’t you understand what I just told you?” Marcel urged in frustration. “Instead of dead parents you can only dream about, you might have a mother and a father alive somewhere, desperately looking for you.”
It was all too much for Nicola. She turned away abruptly and ran to the darkness of the staircase.
“This book is the key to everything” said Marcel when she was gone.
“Maybe it is, but I have to take it back to the tower tonight,” Bea insisted. “If I don’t, Lord Alwyn will know it’s gone and he’ll send Termagant to find it.”
Marcel tried to imagine Bea crawling back through that pitch-black tunnel alone. “I’ll come with you, then,” he told her, swallowing a hard lump in his throat.
“You can’t.”
“But Termagant…”
“You can’t come with me because you smell,” she told him bluntly.
“What do you mean I smell?”
“You’ll leave a scent and Termagant will pick it up.”
“What about you, then?”
She thrust her arm under his nose. “I have no scent.”
Marcel pulled his head back awkwardly. No scent! There were so many strange things about this little girl. “Bea,” he whispered uncertainly, “why is it, well… sometimes I can see you plain as day and other times it’s as if you’re invisible. Is it magic, like Lord Alwyn’s?”
She shook her head. “No, not magic. I’ve always been like this. I don’t know why.”
The hint of pain in her voice told him it was a touchy subject. But it had been a night of strange discoveries, and now Marcel’s mind was working fast. Didn’t Bea seem special, like Nicola and he did? What if Lord Alwyn had stolen away her life too?
“Where are you from?” he asked her. “How did you come to live here with Mrs Timmins?”
“I don’t know where I come from.”
“You mean you’re like me? Did you come here in the middle of the night as well?” he pressed hopefully.
“You think my life is hidden in the Book too,” Bea guessed.
“If you are, then we can soon prove it.” Marcel was excited now.
“No,” she said sharply. “I don’t want the Book to hear my story”
Marcel couldn’t work out her reluctance. Why wouldn’t she want to know the truth, just as he did? “Are you afraid of something?”
She nodded miserably, and suddenly he understood. “You’re not afraid that it will find you are like me and Nicola, you’re afraid that it won’t.”
Bea looked up, her eyes glistening in the candlelight and clearer than ever before. “If I’m not like you, then I’m truly a foundling after all.”
Marcel slipped her hand into his. “There’s only one way to know for sure, isn’t there? You have to tell your story.”
She shifted herself closer to the Book, and with a last glance at Marcel, she began.
“A baby girl…” Her mouth had become dry and her throat suddenly hoarse. “Abandoned,” she tried to say, but she needed a moment to calm herself.
“As a baby girl I was abandoned on the steps of a church. The priest found me there in the morning, blue with the cold and almost starved.”
The pages hadn’t moved, but she wouldn’t give up now. “He took me to a convent where the nuns fed me and kept me warm. They named me Beatrice after their patron saint. I could grow up and become one of them, they said, and they took good care of me. I liked it there.”
Still no response from the Book. Bea closed her eyes and Marcel guessed her story was about to change. “But after a year or two, when I could walk and talk, the nuns became afraid of me. If I stood perfectly still in the shade of a tree, it was like I’d vanished into thin air. They thought I was bewitched and complained to the priest about the child he had brought them. The priest had no answer for their questions, but it was clear the nuns didn’t want me among them, so he brought me to Mrs Timmins.”
Now that she was finished, she dared to open her eyes and look at the Book. It cast a golden glow into the kitchen’s dim light. Her story was not in Lord Alwyn’s Book of Lies. It hadn’t given her this life to replace her own. What she had just spoken aloud was the truth.
Bea sat before the silent, unmoving Book and the hope seemed slowly to leave her body. “I’m not like you,” she sighed.
They could not delay any longer. It would soon be light, and they had to return the Book. Bea shook herself free of her sadness and ventured out into the damp night air, making her way to the far side of the house. Marcel followed Bea as best he could, using his ears more than his eyes. Then she disappeared altogether into the overgrown shrubs beside the house.
He waited anxiously, scouring the darkness, expecting to see Termagant at any moment, until suddenly Bea was back beside him and he could breathe again. Then they crept noiselessly into the house once more, up the stairs and into their beds.
Chapter 6
Whispers in the Orchard
AS EACH DAY PASSED quickly on to the next, Marcel soon found he had been with Mrs Timmins for a week and the routine of life in the orphanage had begun to settle around him. That was the strange thing about routines. After seven, or was it eight days – he wasn’t sure – he felt as though he had been there for a year.
Nicola wouldn’t speak to him the morning after they had huddled together over the Book of Lies, and she seemed even more wary of Bea. Marcel could hardly blame her, and in fact he was quietly pleased. It seemed to have brought her down a peg or two. She might have gone back to her haughty ways, but he detected an uncertainty behind her sullen glares.
“She’s confused,” he whispered to Bea. “I’ll bet she doesn’t know what to think.”
He felt sorry for h
er too, because he knew what misery she was going through better than anyone. “It’s even harder for her than it is for me. I’ve got nothing to remember, but the life Lord Alwyn put into her head must seem pretty real to her.”
“Yes, you’re right. If she’s going to believe us, then she has to forget the life of the pampered girl that she remembers. That must be a hard thing to do,” said Bea.
Marcel noticed the sympathy in her eyes. It was when her face warmed like this that she was easiest to see.
But if Nicola was avoiding him, Marcel couldn’t seem to avoid Fergus, no matter how much he wanted to. Mrs Timmins threw them together at every opportunity, whether it was chopping wood or hauling water from the well. Perhaps she thought they might come to like each other.
When she sent the older boys into the orchard with Albert to collect apples one day, Marcel and Fergus competed to see who could retrieve the highest fruit. But apple trees aren’t much good for climbing. It was clear that one of the pair would come crashing to earth sooner or later. The younger children gathered to see who it would be.
Marcel felt a branch straining under him. He didn’t know whether he had been afraid of heights in his earlier life, but as he swayed precariously in the apple tree, he certainly knew he was now.
He was saved when Albert came looking to see where all his workers had gone. “Get down from there, you fools!” he bellowed angrily. “I don’t know what it is about you two. First you ride wild horses like a pair of madmen and now you’re determined to break every bone in your bodies. Seems I’ll have to keep you apart until you learn some sense.”
He ordered Fergus off to the woodpile. “As for you, Marcel, there are plenty of apples down the end of this row.” He tossed two empty sacks at his face and waved him away, calling to the rest of the boys to follow him back towards the house.
The Book of Lies Page 6
