“I thought you were back,” said Jack, flicking his legs down. “Mab, must you use my best suit coats to cover the mirrors? They’re hand sewn and embroidered.”
“Did you leave the bath full of water for me?”
“Do you know, I’m almost certain that thinking everything is about oneself is the first sign of madness.”
I didn’t mean to smile but I think I must have, because he smiled back at me with nothing arrogant or sarcastic about it. I said: “Thanks.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jack, but the left side of his lips still curved up just slightly. “Be careful Mab, you’ll only confuse me by being pleasant.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t come to be pleasant.”
“Perhaps I’m pessimistic, but I don’t believe I was ever under that impression,” said Jack, rising from his sofa. “Sit down.”
“I was Downstairs earlier,” I said, watching him. He seemed to be unpacking a small cabinet that had liquid-filled bottles and glass swizzle-sticks in it. He took out three of the bottles and two small glasses, and mixed something that fizzed and bubbled, and scented the air with the sweet, sharp smell of mulberries.
“More of your revolutionary little friends, I suppose,” said Jack, but his voice was pleasant enough. I had an idea that he was trying not to quarrel with me, and it left me feeling uneasy. I didn’t know whether to take pains to be polite, or to be rude on principle.
I said: “Not exactly. Well, if they weren’t before, I’ll bet they are now, anyway.”
Jack narrowed his eyes at me from across the room, and scooped up the two full glasses. “Have you been annoying Mother Dearest again?”
“Probably. She cut off a painter’s finger this morning, did you know?”
“Yes, she likes playing with her food,” said Jack. “You shouldn’t have got involved.”
“She sent a card shark after his kids, Jack. What was I supposed to do?”
“Tell your revolutionary little friends. Keep out of it. Hope someone else helps.”
“There was no time, and no one would have helped.”
“Then I don’t see why you did. If Underlanders are ignoring Underlanders, I don’t see why an otherworld girl should be risking her neck.”
“It’s not like that!” I flashed. I wasn’t sure which offended me more: his judgement of Underlanders, or his casual exclusion of myself from Underland. “They’re scared! The streets are bare and everyone is hiding behind their doors and shutters. Have you been outside the castle in the last four years?”
“Why should I?” said Jack coolly. “It’s cool and peaceful in here. Out there it’s all madness and fighting and harsh things.”
“What, like the truth?”
“Don’t sneer, Mab,” he said, strolling back to his seat with both drinks. “It’s rude. Have a drink.”
I didn’t want a drink, but he’d already made it so I took it anyway. It was something sherbetty and lovely, and after a little while I forgot I hadn’t wanted it. Jack sat back down and crossed one leg over the other. He looked elegant and rich and ridiculously poised.
“Well, then,” he said. “This is just delightful. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being ironic or not, so I ignored his question. Instead, I said: “You need to come Downstairs with me. We have to help someone.”
Jack raised one elegant brow. “I’ll do nothing of the kind. Downstairs is no place for me to be wandering around: it’s far too dirty. If it comes to that, it’s no place for you to be wandering around, either. The Prince’s fiancée shouldn’t be consorting with the staff.”
“I am not your fiancée,” I said. “I told you. I’m not old enough to be engaged.”
“Sorry,” said Jack, shrugging. “It’s done. You can’t help it, I can’t help it: it’s all very boring arguing about it. It might be less boring when you’re older.”
“And I also refuse to be engaged to a selfish little rich boy,” I added, looking around me in disgust. “Do you know what it’s like Downstairs?”
Jack sighed. “Don’t be so earnest and severe, Mab. Downstairs is where the servants live. Of course it’s going to be drab.”
“It’s not just drab, the people there are scared, too. She’s doing horrible things to them, and they all know they could be next.”
“This is Underland. Everybody is scared. It’s simply a matter of making sure more people are scared of you than vice versa.”
“Oh, is that what you’ve been doing?” I didn’t even try to disguise the disgust in my voice. “Making sure people are scared of you?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Jack, his eyes avoiding mine. “Mother Dearest is, anyway. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Sometimes,” I said meditatively, “Sometimes I start to think you’re not so bad. And then you say something that reminds me what snivelling little dirtbag you are.”
There was a moment of silence before Jack cleared his throat and said: “You’ve a sharp little tongue on you, Mab.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be a snivelling little dirtbag. Maybe I’d be nicer.”
“Why should I care if you’re nicer?” said Jack swiftly. His face was a little whiter than usual.
“Heck if I know. You know what I do know? I don’t like you. Actually, the more I get to know you, the less I like you. You–”
“All right!” Jack said, lunging to his feet with a slash of bright red in each cheek. “All right, Mab! I’ve grasped your meaning! You needn’t belabour it!”
My drink seemed to have lost its flavour. I put it down with a grimace and said: “Enjoy your pretty little rooms. I have to go back Downstairs.”
“A pleasure, as always,” said Jack, with something of a bite to his voice. That was new and strange, because as objectionable as Jack was, he usually had his temper well under control. He opened the door for me anyway, with something of a hasty hand, and closed it behind me with more than a snap. I was left to creep back Downstairs again as best I might, feeling cold and oddly abandoned. It had been stupid to expect Jack to do anything: he always had been selfish.
I was at something of a loss when I got back Downstairs, but the girl—Reena—was still waiting for me and I couldn’t disappoint her. I said: “Jack couldn’t come,” because I found myself ashamed to confess that Jack had outright refused to help. It shouldn’t have, but it somehow felt as if his selfishness reflected on me. “I’ve got another way of getting into the dungeons, though. Are the girls safe?”
“Penrod has them,” said Reena. My news of Jack didn’t seem to surprise her. She looked frightened– or was she excited? It was hard to tell with the glitter in her eyes and the determined set to her chin. “All the rest of the staff are ready to leave, too: we’re going to clear this place out. Penrod says we’ll meet in the Chessboard Woods.”
“All right,” I said. “Because we’re going to clear out the dungeons, and if there’s anyone left here–”
“There won’t be,” said Reena; and her chin was even more determined than before. “What do you need me to do? Can I come with you?”
“If you like. It’ll be dangerous, though.”
“Breathing’s dangerous now,” Reena said grimly. “What do you need me to do?”
“How do they feed the prisoners?”
“Um, well, there’s a galley down there. The food goes straight from the galley to the cells.”
“Are there guards near the galley?”
“Yes. Well, no. There are about four locked gates between here and there, guards at each. The galley has a guard at its outer door, but its inner door opens straight into the cells’ common area.”
“Is there any other way in?”
Reena nodded. “The main entrance. But you have to go through the other four gates to get to that one anyway.”
“Is it bars, or solid?”
She had to think about that one a bit longer. At last, slowly, she said: �
��I think it’s solid.”
“If we can get in, will there be anyone already there?”
“No. They only let in cook, and only once a day: for breakfast. How are you– oh! The pots?”
“Yes,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “Do you still want to come along?”
“Yes,” she said; and I wondered if she was pretending to be braver than she felt. “When do we start?”
“Now,” I said. I reached out to our distended reflection in the huge curve of a nearby wok, seeing the flash of another reflection behind that, and pulled us both through the curve and into the prison galley.
Reena’s fingers were digging painfully into my arm when we stumbled out into an avalanche of dirty potatoes. Something clanged behind us as a potato ricocheted off it, and I threw a brief look over my shoulder. This time we’d come through a small ironwork stove. There was no real chimney, which explained the soot on the ceiling and the lingering scent of scorched everything. The Queen obviously didn’t like the idea of anyone creeping up or down the chimney. I doubted we’d find any ice vents, either.
“I didn’t feel anything,” said Reena. She sounded slightly disgruntled, and I grinned.
“I didn’t the first time, either,” I told her. “I only started noticing when I started going through by myself. Here, help me fill the potato bin with water.”
Reena looked surprised, but helped me with the wooden barrel. We tipped the rest of the potatoes all over the floor and put it below the pump, where Reena’s practised pumping saw an outpouring of cold water quickly fill it. It was much harder to move it once it was full, but between the two of us we managed to rock it from the galley to the cells.
A buzz of conversation started up straight away: Reena and I were too busy moving the barrel to pay attention, but from the corner of my eyes I saw prisoners shifting between the open, inner doors of the barred cells. When we finally wrestled it into place by the left-hand run of cells, all of the prisoners had gathered around the bars near us. The painter was there, his missing finger bandaged with a frilly bit of material that had to have come from the sleeve of the woman standing next to him. I didn’t recognise any of the others, but when I ran my eyes over the cells on the right side, I caught sight of a white grin in the darkness.
“Cat Cheshire!” I said, frowning. He had been friendly with Jack: how had he ended up here? “What happened to you?”
The grin moved into the foreground, bringing with it Cat Cheshire’s now rather battered hat and his dark glasses. The rest of him looked as battered as his hat, but he still had his swagger.
“I was playing games with the Queen.”
“Cheated, did you?”
“Baby, don’t be like that,” drawled Cat Cheshire. “Naw, she was the better player. Outdid me at the game and outmanoeuvred me at the run.”
“Why didn’t Jack get you out of here?”
“You don’t know Jack too well, baby. Are you here to break me out?”
“You and them both,” I said, and upturned the barrelful of water.
It surged across the floor in a dirty, tsunami of possibility, and each of the captive Underlanders moved back to avoid wetting their feet. That made me smile a bit: they’d be happy enough to get their feet wet once they knew this puddle was their way out. I slid smoothly into the puddle and back out again, this time on the other side. The Underlanders alternately hissed in surprise and gasped in delight when I appeared among them.
“Right,” I said: “Two at a time. Everyone line up.”
They did line up. Quickly and quietly, and entirely trustfully. I put my arms around the first two of them and drew them into the puddle with me. This time I didn’t bring us out back in the main prison: I went deeper into the puddle and surfaced in the Chessboard Woods. It was quite some time since I had first seen Sir Blanc, but the woods didn’t seem to have changed at all. I hoped fervently that the red knight was still stuck in his tree and unable to joust at passing strangers.
“Don’t change squares until you’re all here,” I said, just in case; and slipped back into my pool for the next two Underlanders. They were waiting for me, their eyes bright and frighteningly hopeful, and when I appeared again their eyes brightened still further. I tried to ignore it, but it was hard to ignore so much determined adulation. It made me feel uncomfortable and slightly dishonest: really, I hadn’t done that much more than Jack.
It took longer than I liked to get them all out. Even before I turned to the cell on the right side of the prison I’d been at it for the better part of an hour, ferrying two people at a time through to the Chessboard Woods. I didn’t like to take more than two at a time because I wasn’t sure where they would end up if I lost one of them between surfaces. Still, it made me smile to think that tonight Jack would have to fetch his own supper. The idea, as funny as it was, reminded me that the Queen would also have to fetch her own supper, and that thought wasn’t quite so funny. I hoped the Chessboard Woods was far enough away from her ire. I was reasonably certain that she couldn’t travel the way I did, so any chase she gave would have to be via shark-drawn carriage. That would give everyone a chance to move on and find somewhere safe to hide: prisoners and castle staff alike.
The painter and his lady friend were among the last to be taken: I think they might have planned it, because when we were the last three in the cell he grasped my arm to stop me stepping into the puddle. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll try to make it count.”
Count for what, exactly? I wondered, as I took them through the puddle to safely. The rebellion was far away and spoken of in whispers. It wasn’t here and now. But these people, these ordinary people, were talking like it was here and now.
When we were in the Chessboard Woods, I said: “I’ll bring your girls once the others are out,” because I didn’t know what else to say. “Wait for the castle staff: they’ll be here within two days.”
The painter hugged me, a fierce, rough hug that left blood on my shirt and tears in his eyes, and I slipped back to the cells before anyone else could do the same. Things in Underland were becoming all too real, and I found that it was hard to endure the looks that were bearing down on me. They were too heavy—heavy with meaning, heavy with hope, heavy with expectation—and I was eager to get away from them.
They wanted me to stay, after. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that– or why I didn’t stay, for that matter. Maybe I didn’t feel old enough for the responsibility. Maybe it was just nice being able to drop in and help, and then leave again. Maybe I was scared. Whatever the reason, I left as soon as the last Underlander was safely in the Chessboard Woods; without saying goodbye, without fanfare, and most of all without tears.
I didn’t leave entirely unnoticed: Cat Cheshire came with me when I went home. Nowhere in Underland was safe for him to play, he said, and if he couldn’t play he didn’t want to do anything. I told him bluntly that if he didn’t play for money and wouldn’t work for it, he would be doing something whether or not he wanted to– starving.
“That’s why I’m coming with you,” he said. “Jack did try to warn me before it happened. He told me there are places I can earn a good living in your world.”
“You could earn a good living in any world,” I said, as blunt in my praise as I had been in my dissent. Cat Cheshire’s skill on the piano was something Australia hadn’t seen since the 1940s.
I had no one to introduce him to and only a small amount of useful advice, but Cat Cheshire was the sort who tended to land on his feet. He got himself a job playing nights at an old ’40s style club, and the next I heard of him, he was touring the world. He had taken to my world with as much verve and considerably more success than I had taken to his. Forsaking what was behind, he had seized on what was ahead, and it seemed to me that perhaps I would be facing the same decision before too many more years.
I didn’t see Jack for three years after that. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sorry for it. I didn’t want to be fond of someone as horrible as J
ack, and it seemed to me that we had gotten so used to each other over the years that I had very nearly become fond of him. There were still the birthday presents every year and I still saw Jack in the reflections, but the visiting stopped: both mine and his. And I suppose I really had been visiting him, if it came to that. It was Jack I saw visited often when I went into Underland– Jack I was most likely to see. That all came to an end; though I still visited Underland, and I still experimented with my puddle-jumping. It wasn’t Underland I wanted to give up: just Jack.
When I was eighteen I came back to find the tea-table broken, the teacups scattered and the cutlery strewn through the forest. The only sign of the Hatter was his multifaceted hat, crushed and forsaken by the broken table. I sat down in the grass with the hat cradled in my arms, frightened and unsure of anything but that an evil I had felt threatening had finally arrived. Where was Hatter? Where was the Hare? Hatter wouldn’t have willingly left without his hat, I knew.
When I wasn’t feeling so cold, I rose with the hat still clutched between my hands, and searched through the tumbled remains of the tea party. The grass had been flattened by sharp, metallic footprints that could only have been formed by card sharks, and on a jagged edge of broken chair I found a clump of red velvet. The Queen! Where had she taken Hatter and Hare? And what, I wondered in sudden coldness, did she want with them? I’d always been quite sure that they were involved in something dangerous and tricky: their mad way of speaking was always irritating, hard to follow, and sometimes stunningly to the point, and I had often been surprised by a gleam of intelligence in Hatter’s eyes. Even Hare, who hadn’t ever shown what I might consider to be intelligence, had often shown a cunning, sideways streak of slyness in his dealings. Had their madness been a cover? No, I didn’t think so. I thought it was more a case of them desperately using every advantage in a silent, deadly war against the Queen. Once, long ago, Sir Blanc had spoken of the rebellion I’d seen brewing over the last few years. He hadn’t had his wits about him at the time and hadn’t been able to tell me anything else about it—nor had Hatter or Hare ever been persuaded or tricked into talking about it—and eventually I’d stopped asking. It was just one more cog in the ticking, whirring, complicated darkness that I felt creeping over Underland from the first time I popped out in the teapot.
Playing Hearts Page 8
