Immortal

by Gillian Shields

  “How will we get there?” asked a girl called Katherine Thomas.

  “The Hall is only about two miles across the moors, to the east of Wyldcliffe. I have arranged for you to have lunch over there, and a private bus will collect us to return to school. If the weather is good, I propose that we set off early in the morning and walk to the Hall.”

  A buzz of excitement broke out all around the classroom. I guessed that the idea of getting out of school and roaming the moors was what appealed to most of the girls, rather than actually looking at the museum.

  “That will do, girls; quiet down,” said Miss Scratton. For once she smiled. “You’ll need to bring your notebooks and sketch pads with you. Everyone should assemble by the main door promptly after breakfast on the day of the visit.”

  The bell rang for lunch, and the class jostled into the corridor, chatting excitedly. I found Sarah at my side, looking self-conscious but determined.

  “You could sit next to me on the bus, if you like,” she said quietly.

  I looked at her freckled face and wondered how I had ever been angry with her.

  “I’d really like that. Thanks. And I’m so sorry, Sarah; I never meant to—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She smiled, and I knew we were friends again.

  “Have you been to this place before?” I asked.

  “I’ve ridden past it on Starlight,” said Sarah. “You can’t see much, as it’s surrounded by enormous trees. To be perfectly honest it just looked like an old house to me, but if it perks Miss Scratton up to go see it, that can’t be a bad thing.”

  The prospect of spending the day out of the school in the company of Sarah was like a breath of fresh air blowing through Wyldcliffe’s corridors. That evening, when I was tidying up the music room with Helen, I asked her cheerfully if she was looking forward to our visit to the Hall.

  “I wouldn’t go there if you paid me,” she said, looking more awkward than ever.

  “Don’t be silly.” I laughed. “We won’t get lost on the moors.”

  “I wish I could get lost out there,” she exclaimed passionately. “I’d like to walk on the moors forever and never come back.”

  I didn’t understand her. Was she just odd, or was she ill in some way?

  “Are you feeling okay, Helen? You seem really stressed. Don’t you think you should tell Mrs. Hartle—”

  “No!” Helen burst out. “Don’t you dare say anything to her!”

  “Sorry,” I said, taken aback. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Well, don’t.” She glared, starting to stack a pile of crumpled music. “Concentrate on helping yourself. You’ll need it.”

  I finished my chores without trying to make any more small talk. I was looking forward to the day at Fairfax Hall, even if crazy Helen Black wasn’t.

  nineteen

  THE JOURNAL OF LADY AGNES, NOVEMBER

  4,1882 I am almost crazy with worry.

  I wish I could heal S. as easily as I did Martha. My old nurse has long been troubled by a cataract in her eye that clouded her vision, but now she cries and laughs and declares that it is a miracle that she can see perfectly well again. Only I know what has brought about this change—it was the power of the living Fire, which I called upon in my Circle of healing.

  I cannot rejoice in this as I should, for I am so concerned about my beloved friend. It is as though he is ill with some strange depression, and he is as pale and thin as when he first came home from his travels. He cannot relax, and pushes himself to work harder and study deeper, without allowing himself to rest.

  Although I do not like to think this, I believe that S. envies my achievements, despite the fact that his powers increase by the day. His long white fingers can bend metal, or shatter a glass or cup, then reassemble their atoms as easily as liquid flows from one shape to another. But he dismisses what he has learned and wants more. Yesterday he was in a particularly black mood.

  “Magic tricks, that’s all I know, Agnes. And my knowledge does not seem to produce anything good or useful. I am no healer.”

  It is true. He does not have this gift. I did not know what to say to him.

  “Perhaps it will come later, as you study more.”

  “Perhaps! I am already weary with study. And perhaps I will never achieve anything at all. I have no insight into the deep elemental powers. But you have been touched by the Fire, the greatest of them all.”

  He brooded for a while, then spoke hesitantly.

  “You remember that the Book said that men…males should have followers…a group of females? Maybe that is what I need to go further—” In that instant, I seemed to see him surrounded by a group of women shrouded in dark cloaks.

  “No!” For some reason this idea was distasteful to me. Then the vision changed and I saw him with one girl—the girl I have seen before—and he looked at her with such tenderness that my heart twisted with pain…. “No,” I repeated more calmly. “This is our secret, for the two of us. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “The two of us?” His eyes glittered brilliantly, and he took my hand. “Agnes, you and I could do so much together, if only you would really help me.”

  “I do help you,” I protested. “You know I would do anything for you.”

  “Then tell me what you know, Agnes,” he urged. “Teach me your secrets.”

  “I don’t have any secrets, especially not from you. Everything I know has come from the Book.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it’s not. You do more than is set out in its pages. How do you do it? Tell me!”

  “I don’t know, truly. I carry out the Rites as instructed, and then I think, I feel, I desire. And then…”

  “Then what?” he asked eagerly.

  I shook my head. How could I describe the dazzling images in my head, the tingle in my hands, the surge of power through my body when I carry out the Mystic Rites?

  “I can’t explain. But does it matter how it happens if good comes of it? Look how happy Martha is now, and there are so many others I can help.”

  He threw my hand aside. “You have the power of Fire, Agnes, and yet you will not share it with me. I have seen what you can do, and you could teach me your secrets if you chose.”

  I shook my head dumbly, thinking of how I’d first willed the spirits to answer when he called them. Perhaps he was right: Perhaps I could help him further. But something in his desperation held me back.

  “I can’t explain,” I said slowly. “It is something given to me and me alone.”

  Was I wrong to say this? Was I wrong to deny him? How could I refuse him, when his happiness means more to me than my own? I barely understand myself, yet I know that I did right.

  Now silences that were never there before fall between us. From time to time I catch him staring at me, yet seeing nothing, as though he wanders far in his thoughts. I cannot describe how this grieves me. I would do anything for him…anything but this.

  I fear we no longer entirely trust each other.

  Twenty

  “I

  thought you said you trusted me,” teased Sebastian.

  “I do trust you,” I replied with a laugh. “I’m just not sure about the boat.”

  Sebastian had somehow produced an old rowing boat, which floated sluggishly at the edge of the lake, and he was as excited as a kid at the idea of taking it on the water. I prayed that no one would spot us, but it was good to see him fool around, as though he had managed to throw off his worries for a while.

  Despite my laughter, I didn’t feel that great. It was the night before the class trip to Fairfax Hall, clear and windless and bitingly cold. I had put on a thick sweatshirt over my nightclothes, but I still shivered, as if I were getting sick. I hadn’t forgotten my desire to swim, but tonight the lake looked uninviting, its black waters still and sullen. I felt uneasy. This was no innocent swimming pool, I reminded myself. Laura had died here, on this very spot.

  I was sick of shadows and secre
ts.

  I wished that Sebastian and I could meet like other people did, in coffee bars and at the movies and parties. Just do regular stuff. I was getting tired of hiding in the dark.

  “If the boat springs a leak we’ll get a dip in the lake; that’s all,” Sebastian said, untying the ropes. Then he glanced up at me. “Evie, are you all right? You’re not scared, are you?”

  “I’m not scared of anything,” I said, stepping into the boat and trying to shake off my strange mood. It rocked from side to side. There was a faint smell of mildew from its damp timbers.

  “Where did you find this?” I asked.

  “Oh, there are all sorts of things that have been abandoned at Wyldcliffe that people don’t value anymore. This fine vessel was rotting in an old boathouse, covered with laurel bushes….”

  “Rotting!” I exclaimed. I liked the idea of our expedition even less.

  “It will last for one more outing.” He smiled coaxingly. “Don’t worry. Just lie back and enjoy the trip. Here, Evie, wrap my coat around you.”

  Sebastian looked so happy as he passed me the thick coat that I couldn’t resist. He began to row skillfully across the lake. His cheeks were flushed, and the dark shadows under his eyes seemed to have faded. My stomach tightened at the sight of him as he pulled and stretched in his white linen shirt. I wanted to reach out and touch him.

  But I didn’t know whether he would want that. Dearest Evie, sweet Evie, wonderful Evie…Since our ride out to the old fort, Sebastian had been kind and attentive and affectionate, but he hadn’t touched me again or put his arms around me. And he had never kissed me, not even a peck on the cheek.

  Why not? I kept asking myself. Was I unattractive to him? And what had really happened with that other girl? As we glided farther out onto the deep lake, a horrible thought flashed across my mind.

  The girl Sebastian had once known might have been poor dead Laura.

  Laura. Of course. That would explain why he had been hanging around on the night I had first come down to the lake. He must have been keeping vigil over the spot where Laura had died. It was Laura who had drawn Sebastian to the lake, not me. It all made sense now. I had been sleeping in Laura’s bed, taking her place at the school, and now I was with the boy she had left behind. I hope she haunts your every step.

  So that was why he was determined to view me only as a friend. After all, how could I compete with the idealized memory of a tragic victim? But what had he meant about hurting the girl he had known? How would that fit in with Laura? Maybe they had quarreled before she died; maybe he blamed himself somehow.

  “You’re very quiet,” said Sebastian, letting the oars hang motionless over the edge of the boat. “Do you want to go back?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I lied. “I was just thinking.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  I struck out randomly at the first thing that came into my head.

  “I miss my home. This lake and the gardens and the hills, they all seem—I don’t know—too still. Stifling, somehow. I wish we could walk by the sea when the waves are angry and the wind is racing. I can’t really explain, but I feel different there…free.”

  “I’d like that.” He smiled. “I’d love to walk on the beach with you.”

  “We could walk and sail and swim.” My voice cracked with longing. My mind was on fire, and my body ached with restless, unnamed desires. I tried to pull myself together, to be sensible Evie again. “At least I have one day of freedom tomorrow,” I said. “My class is going for a walk over the moors.”

  “So Mrs. Hartle’s prisoners are going to be let out, are they? And where is she letting her poor captives wander?”

  “We’re going to visit an old house—Fairfax Hall. Do you know it?”

  Sebastian began to row back to the overhanging laurels at the side of the lake.

  “Sure,” he said, almost too carelessly. “Everyone around here knows the place. Poor Evie, if that’s tomorrow’s big excitement you’ll be disappointed. It’s a dull old house full of other people’s memories, that’s all.”

  He tied the rope around a thick branch and jumped out of the boat, splashing his boots in the mud at the edge of the lake. Then he turned and lifted me onto the grass. For one moment we clung to each other like lovers.

  “Evie,” he said urgently. “Promise me something.”

  “Of course, what is it?”

  “If you hear anything…in the village…anything bad about me, you’d still trust me, wouldn’t you? You’d still come to see me like this? Promise?” He held me even tighter. My heart thudded against his.

  “I promise,” I said. “I promise.”

  Sebastian stepped back, pale and tense. “I have to go now.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Don’t go yet.”

  “I must,” he repeated. “I’m sorry, Evie.” He began to stride away over the dark lawns.

  “Sebastian, wait! When will I see you?”

  “Tomorrow night,” he called back. “And remember—you gave me your promise!”

  I felt chilled right through to the bone. Why would anyone try to turn me against Sebastian? Perhaps he really had done something to hurt Laura. Perhaps it was common knowledge among his friends in the village, and he was worried that I would find out. Perhaps I was an absolute idiot to have anything to do with him at all. I set off wearily, anxious to get back to the dorm.

  When I reached the stable yard, something looked different. I paused. The green door that led into the servants’ quarters had swung open. Strange, I thought. I was sure I had closed it carefully.

  Everything in the yard was quiet, apart from the occasional swish of a horse’s tail. I crept across the cobblestones and slipped though the door. Then it banged shut behind me, and I heard a key grate in the lock. I whipped around and tugged at the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. Someone had locked me in.

  Panic leaped up in me like a sheet of fire.

  “Who’s there?” I called. “Open the door!” But there was no answer, only the soft sound of footsteps outside. Fumbling wildly on the floor, I felt for Helen’s flashlight. It was gone. Of course it was gone, and I knew who had taken it—Celeste. She must have set up this stunt; it would be so like her….

  Think, Evie, think.

  I had to get back to the dorm before Celeste got hold of one of the mistresses. The faintest gleam of light spilled through a skylight above the door into the old passageway. It would have to be enough.

  It was easy to tell myself to keep calm, but the farther I went, the darker it got. Soon I was groping along in dense blackness, feeling the wall as my only guide. I could hear rustling noises, scampering and whispering in the dark. There was the faint swish of a skirt and the clatter of boots as I passed the old kitchens. Can’t you hear their voices? I dreaded to feel the touch of a long-dead hand on my arm. Don’t be stupid, I kept saying to myself. It’s only your imagination; the dark can’t hurt you…it can’t.

  I found the narrow entrance to the servants’ stairs and climbed them in total blindness. As I counted the steps with sobbing breaths, I was convinced that another girl’s light footsteps were following me. Swish-swish-swish: The sound of her skirt was getting nearer.

  At last I could see a crack of light ahead, the outline of the door to the dormitory corridor. I fell upon the handle just in time to hear the bolt being pushed home on the other side. Celeste must have run unseen up the main stairs and cut me off.

  My efforts had been for nothing. I was locked inside the old servants’ wing, trapped, just as she had intended. I sank to the floor, my back against the door, trying to breathe. There was no one following me, I told myself frantically. I was alone. All I had to do was wait until morning, when Helen would surely unbolt the door and find me here.

  Breathe…just breathe.

  I remembered the words of an old song that Frankie had sung when I was a little girl.

  The night is dark, but day is near,

  Hush, little baby, do not fear….
/>
  The night is dark, I repeated over and over again, the night is dark, until I thought I would scream. Then the door behind me rattled, and someone opened it. I fell into the corridor, expecting to see Celeste. But it wasn’t Celeste who had opened the door.

  It was Miss Scratton. And standing next to her was Helen.

  Twenty-one

  I

  had been totally wrong about Celeste. She’d had nothing to do with what had happened on the stairs. It was Helen who had betrayed me to Miss Scratton.

  After we had finally gotten to bed, I had whispered to her angrily, “Why did you do that?” She had mumbled that I would understand one day. I was furious, but for once I agreed with Celeste: Helen Black was completely nuts. And now, thanks to her, I was in disgrace.

  “I cannot express how disappointed I am in you, Evie,” Miss Scratton declared the next day. The whole class was waiting by the Abbey’s imposing front door, coats and hats tugged by the November wind. Miss Dalrymple was there too, decked out in walking boots and holding a map. “It was very silly of you to go wandering down those old stairs in the middle of the night. You could easily have fallen and broken an ankle. The High Mistress will not be pleased when she hears about this.”

  Celeste shot a look of triumph at India and Sophie.

  “This is the second demerit you have acquired in your short time at Wyldcliffe. Let it be the last!” I took the crimson card that Miss Scratton gave me and stuffed it in my pocket. “The other girls will not speak to you today, and you will walk to Fairfax Hall at my side. Think yourself lucky that you are allowed to come on the outing at all.”

  I hung back from the others. Sarah shrugged sympathetically but didn’t dare speak to me.

  “Now, girls,” said Miss Scratton, “it’s a long walk, and we don’t want to be late. Miss Dalrymple, if you would kindly lead the way.” The class began to head down the drive.