Deep Secret

by Diana Wynne Jones

  He wasn’t. Nick went in and looked. So we hunted all over the hotel again.

  This time we found him with Mervin Thurless, but not until we’d hunted through all the downstairs places and most of the public parts of the first floor – not to speak of asking everyone we met. Rick Corrie went bounding past and sent us up to the first floor. Someone else sent us down again, where we met Wendy, who said she wouldn’t know Rupert if he came up and hit her. Then a great huge man with a fringe of black beard round his face and FANGS! written on his T-shirt came up and slammed into Wendy and hugged her. It made a truly massive embrace. And he told us over Wendy’s shoulder that Rupert the Mage was in Ops looking for Mervin Thurless. So there we went, and a man in battle fatigues who was trying to canoodle with a carroty girl told us wearily that he’d only just come on shift, try the Press Room. So we did that. And got handed another news sheet full of stuff about Uncle Ted pinching ideas from Mervin Thurless, and Tina Gianetti refusing to have both of them together on the same panel ever again.

  “I bet he did take stuff from Thurless,” Nick said, reading all about it as we went along the corridor.

  “I’m sure he did,” I said. “He told me he couldn’t bear to see ideas lying around not being used properly. And I wouldn’t trust a person like Thurless to use an idea properly if it was handed to him on a scroll from Heaven.”

  “It says here,” said Nick, “that Thurless is running the Writers’ Workshop tomorrow in place of Wendy Willow. I should think she’d be better at it, wouldn’t you?”

  By this time it was quite late. People were appearing changed into fine clothes ready for the parties. Maxim Hough hurried past wearing a velvet patchwork jacket, beside two achingly slender girls in glittery dresses. And coming towards us were two fabulous women in long tight black leather dresses that laced up all over with red thongs. It took me a moment to recognise that they were two of the long-haired people with the baby. Their hair was piled up in glossy hairdos and their false eyelashes stuck out a good inch.

  Nick recognised them at once. “Wow!” he said. They were delighted. They struck poses and Nick admired them. “What have you done with the baby?” he asked.

  “Larry’s looking after him,” said the one on the left. “Loretta, I mean.”

  “She’s got ever so maternal since she changed sex,” the one on the right explained.

  Nick became speechless. I asked them rather despairingly whether they’d seen Rupert.

  “Rupert the Mage?” they said in their lovely husky voices. One of them added, “I love that man – he’s so straight!” and the other one said that he (or she) had seen Rupert going into the Filk Room, just along there. Then they went swaying off – they both had shiny black boots on with six-inch heels. I wondered how they could walk at all, in those tight black leather skirts as well.

  Nick said, “I know one of them has to be a man! Can you tell which?”

  “Darned if I know!” I said. “They’re both so beautiful. But that baby’s surely having a weird upbringing!”

  Nick said, in a vague way, “All upbringings are weird.” He had his con map out, looking for this Filk Room. “It’s down the end of this corridor.”

  It was a medium-sized empty room with bits of sound equipment strewn about in it, mostly flexes snaking all over the floor. Rupert Venables and Mervin Thurless were sitting on the only two chairs in there, talking deeply. But Thurless swung round and jutted his beard at us as we put our faces round the door. When he saw it was me, he looked savage.

  “So you think you’re going to take this room away from me as well, do you?” he snarled. “Go away. Go and voodoo-dance somewhere else!”

  We shut the door hurriedly and went and sat by the wall in a kind of lobby outside. Nick said, “It’s all right. We can catch Rupert the Mage as soon as he comes out.”

  I wailed, “Oh dear! It was his room Rick Corrie gave me!”

  “It’s not your fault,” Nick said.

  We sat for some time. Nick was quite happy. He got out a notebook and set to perfecting his Wantchester game, bringing it up to Bristolia standard, he said. I was pretty restive. It was an unrestful spot. Waiters and waitresses kept coming out through a door disguised as a mirror, carrying glasses and boxes of bottles for the publishers’ parties. They all seemed to be talking about music. The waitress who had brought Nick his cornflakes hurried by saying, “It’s not that I mind music – it’s not that. I just want to know where it’s coming from.”

  And the waiter who had brought the coffee said, “Yeah, I know. It’s creepy. Music in the air.”

  A few minutes after they had gone, I heard music too. It was coming from behind the closed door of the Filk Room. It didn’t strike me as creepy, but it seemed unlikely that Rupert Venables and Mervin Thurless had both suddenly started playing guitars. “Nick…” I said.

  Nick looked up, listened and said, “Oh no!” The guitars had now been joined by a sweet soprano song.

  We both jumped up and Nick tore open the Filk Room door. The three women alone in there looked rather startled. “We were just having a bit of a rehearsal,” said the one who had been singing. “The filking doesn’t really start until eight.”

  Nick spotted the door at the other end of the room, where the women must have come in and Rupert and Thurless gone out. “Sorry,” he said, sprinting for it. “Looking for someone.” We crossed the room like an army crossing the stage, with the women gaping at us, and crashed out the other side into a shabby passage where the service stairs were. Nick seemed to have no doubt that Rupert had recently gone up those stairs. He went up them at a gallop and I panted behind, thinking that, even if Rupert had gone that way, he was long gone by now. There was a fire door at the top, saying it led to the Second Floor. Nick pushed it open, looked, and beckoned me on with a large excited sweep of his arm.

  I panted up to him to see a long corridor ahead, with the usual mirrors at the corners, and Rupert Venables just turning left at that end. We raced after him. I was almost as frustrated as Nick by then. I’d wasted a whole afternoon and I was determined to catch him this time. We whirled round that corner, me on Nick’s heels, only seconds behind Rupert.

  It was only when we had run some yards down a passage lined with mirrors, but the glass all faint and dark, like the reflections of reflections, that I had a clear memory of the hotel corridor and knew something was very wrong. There hadn’t been a cross-corridor. There never was this side of the hotel. There was always only a right-hand turn. There was no way we could have turned left without crashing into the wall. But we had.

  Nick realised all this too, a second later. “Where are we?”

  “In the soup,” I said. “Run. Keep him in sight.”

  Rupert Venables was still ahead, calmly walking along there in the dim distance. I was fairly sure that if we lost him we were lost for good. If I looked over my shoulder – and I did, about six times, in increasing panic – there was, well, not the hotel. A sort of fuzzy strangeness. Nick looked once too. Then he seized my wrist and we ran. And that was another thing about this strange experience. Rupert Venables just walked, a bit jauntily, swinging along as if he knew where he was going, but not walking fast. We fair pelted. But he was always the same distance away.

  I was going to type, ‘It was hard not to panic,’ but the fact is we did panic. Running and running and not making any difference is like your worst dreams. Hot and horrified and nightmarish, we ran. And shortly it was exactly like my worst dreams, because there, just to one side, was the bush with my thornlady in it – or that she was part of, or whatever. She said to me, sneeringly, “What good do you think this is doing you?”

  “Oh shut up!” I told her.

  I don’t think Nick heard her or knew she was there. He went trampling and crunching through one side of her bush, bellowing, “Rupert the Mage! WAIT!” with his voice roaring and cracking with panic. The bush whipped about with indignation. She was furious. But I had no attention for that, because Nick w
as dragging me away at my wrist and Rupert Venables just walked on and didn’t seem to hear us yelling.

  We seemed to be mostly out in the open air by then, on a hillside of steep slanting banks, going downwards ahead of us. But there were regular dreadful places where it was all fuzzy sliding instead, where what was almost hillside, but not quite, moved giddily this way and that. There was hillside sliding overhead in those places, and we had to duck under, with our stomachs squirming with vertigo, and then jump over the fuzzy slidings underfoot, because we neither of us dared touch those bits. And the relief of getting to grassy slope again would have been inexpressible, except that Rupert was always just that bit ahead and we had to go hurtling, shouting, ducking and jumping down after him again. In the grassy bits, the sky kept changing, from cloudy to blue, to near-dark, to sunset, and back to blue with white clouds. It made me feel sick.

  The nightmare ended in a lovely Spring afternoon. Rupert jumped down ahead of us, and we jumped down after him, from what seemed to be the bank of a hedge, into a dirt road. He walked slantwise across the road to a shabby white gate in the hedge opposite. We scuttled over after him for dear life.

  “Stop! Wait!” Nick croaked.

  “Help!” I added.

  He had his hand on the gate latch, but he spun round and stared at us. I have never seen him look so utterly outraged and angry, not even when he interrupted the Witchy Dance. “What the hell are you two doing here?” he said. His voice had the sort of cold clank to it of someone chipping stones.

  Nick quailed. “I – er… I wanted to speak to you,” he quavered.

  “We sort of followed you by mistake,” I apologised. “We did shout, but you didn’t seem to hear. And we didn’t dare lose you.”

  Rupert said nothing. He simply did that thing of taking hold of his left lens and pinning us with it, like vile germs on a gold-rimmed slide. I began to get angry myself at that. I remember thinking it was ridiculous, us all humble and him glaring at us for something we couldn’t help, in a spot like that. There were violets and primroses growing on the banks by the gate, and a clump of tiny daffodils to one side. I could hear distant, gentle country noises, sheep bleating and hens clucking and so on, and it seemed quite out of place and stupid for him to stand glaring and blaming us for being there.

  Nick was completely crushed by the lens treatment. That surprises me whenever I think of it. Until then I’ve never known Master Nick crushed by anything. He said “Sorry!” and looked like a dog with its tail between its legs.

  That made me even angrier. “I’m sorry too,” I said, “but it was an accident. Nick wanted to talk to you about computer games, so we ran after you. There’s no call to fry us on your lens for it!”

  Rupert breathed in. I could see he was going to say something that would blast me. But the gate opened out of his hand before he could speak and a tall, untidy, farmerish man in green wellies looked out at us all. “Hello, Rupe!” he said. “What’s going on here?”

  “Oh – hello, Will,” Rupert said, rather let down and wind-out-of-sails. “You seem to have some uninvited guests, is what’s going on. Nick and Maree followed me here somehow.”

  The man Will grinned sweetly. I could tell he knew Rupert was furious. “You weren’t invited either,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see you.”

  “It’s not the same!” Rupert said. He didn’t exactly stamp his foot or even yell particularly, but the way he said it was doing both those things, and I somehow understood from it that Will was his elder brother and had had years of experience in winding Rupert up.

  “Is your name Venables too?” I asked Will, testing my theory.

  “That’s right.” He grinned even more sweetly. “Do you know my brother well?”

  “NO,” Nick, Rupert and I all said in chorus.

  “Shame,” said Will. “He quite often improves on acquaintance. Why don’t you all come in?” He held the gate open invitingly and we all three trooped in past him.

  Beyond it was a low white house against a hill of ploughed fields. I could see the roofs of quite a large village at the top of those fields. But I didn’t pay much attention to the view, because the space beyond the gate, which was a garden of sorts, was just such a mass of creatures. The majority were pale fluffy chicks, all running about and cheeping. They sounded like a chorus of mobile phones. They must have been several different kinds of chick, because the adult birds goose-stepping about amongst them were some strange sort of hen and peculiar ducks and a number of tall grey birds with long pink legs. But there was a peacock too, which flew up into a bare tree with a shriek and a whacking of wings that made Nick jump and clutch hold of me. A large silky dog appeared then, out of nowhere, pushing her nose lovingly into Rupert’s hand – and then doing the same quickly to Will, in case he was offended – and she was followed by four cats and a whole gang of kittens. Meanwhile a flock of white creatures – I couldn’t tell if they were odd sheep or unusual goats – was coming galloping from mid-distance, baying with interest. Since they had fairly sizeable horns, Nick was not happy to see them and got behind me quickly.

  But that was as nothing to Nick’s dismay when the door of the house burst open and a string of little girls – six of them, I gathered later – came rushing out screaming. “Rupert! Rupert’s here!” and flung themselves in a mass upon their uncle. The smallest had come out in such a hurry that she was only wearing her vest. Two of the kids had heads of hair even bushier than mine. I could see they got it from Will. He had bushy hair that wriggled. He was standing there grinning broadly at our reaction to his livestock, and he more or less laughed when the inrush of little girls caused Nick to yelp, “Oh help!” and retreat towards the gate.

  I would have expected Rupert to behave the same way, but he surprised me by greeting his nieces as enthusiastically as they greeted him. He let himself be grabbed and dangled from and then dragged off to see the new swing and slide, looking as if he loved every minute. Before he had been dragged many yards, though, a fantastically good-looking woman in jodhpurs and pink bedroom slippers appeared at the house door waving a small pair of red leggings.

  “Vendela’s trousers!” she shouted. “Put them on her, Rupert.”

  She threw them and Rupert caught them, laughing. Then he was dragged away, scattering chicks and kittens and halting the charge of the sheep-goats, who stopped dead when Rupert and the children all rushed past their noses. The woman came up the path towards us, smiling, to find out who we were.

  “My wife, Carina,” Will said. It was like someone saying, “And here are the Crown Jewels.”

  “We’re Nick and Maree Mallory,” I explained, “and we’re here by mistake, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m just in the middle of getting a meal,” Carina said. “You’ll stay and have something with us, won’t you?”

  “Rupert won’t like it,” I said. “But—”

  “Rupert can lump it,” said Will. “Have we got enough food, Carey?”

  “Eggs to burn,” Carina called, on her way back to the house. “Sponduley and Cash both started laying today, as well as all the quacks.”

  “That’s all right then,” said Will. “I hope you both like eggs.”

  “Yes, and we didn’t have any lunch,” Nick said.

  “Then that’s settled then,” said Will. Then, in the most natural, casual way, he took us on a tour of the livestock while he got out of us what had happened and then gave us an explanation (which we certainly wouldn’t have got out of Rupert). I had been dying to take a look at the strange hens,, not to speak of the birds with the long pink legs. Will trudged casually in among the little running, cheeping birds in his great boots, picking up one here, and another there, and upending them for me. “A quack chick,” he said. “Female, look. Most of these are Buktaru quacks. Good layers. Nice feathers too. See, this one’s getting her blue tailfeathers already. She’ll be different blues all over when she’s fledged. We sell a lot of these, but we make pets of the sollyhens.
Here. This one’s a sollyhen – unless it’s a cock. They’re hard to sex at this age. What do you think?”

  I peered at the upside-down rear end of the placid yellow handful he was holding out to me and mustered all my despised vet-learning. “It’s a cock,” I said.

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” he agreed.

  I could tell I had gone up in his estimation, so I risked saying, “But I never heard of a sollyhen. Are they the ones that look like herons?”

  “No, those are butes,” he told me. “You don’t have those in your world, or sollies either. Butes are a bit like guineafowl to eat, but they’re much quieter to keep. They only shout if there’s a fox near. When they shout, we turn Petra out.” He patted the head of the silky dog. “Petra eats foxes for breakfast, don’t you, lady? Sollies, now, they’re a bit like bantams, but they have lots of these little spotted feathers. And their combs are orange. Come and see the goats.”

  He trudged away into an orchard-like section of the garden, followed by Petra, followed by me, followed by several butes, followed by Nick, looking bored and traumatised. The white, horned flock did not please Nick, although he pleased them. They bustled and butted around us, then concentrated on Nick and left drool on his jeans.

  “They’re very intelligent,” Will observed, “and perverse as hell. They’re teasing you, Nick. Look pleased to see them and they’ll leave you alone.”

  I was fascinated by the creatures, so of course they avoided me. They were so like sheep, except for the mad goats’ eyes. Will told me they kept them for milk and for wool. We caught one and ran our hands through the silky, curly pelt, which he said made the most wonderful sweaters. Beautiful. I felt myself relaxing, in a way I hadn’t for years. I remembered all over again why I had decided to become a vet. The air of this place had something to do with it. It was wonderful – even laden with goat-smell – fresh, mild and light. Being in the hotel all those hours had given me a headache I hadn’t noticed until then, when the air melted it away. I think it was having the same effect on Nick – unless it was the distant sound of Rupert being mobbed on the other side of the orchard. That seemed to please Nick, and it certainly pleased me.