“I just wish I knew something about them,” Tess said. “My parents, I mean. When they were born, where they got married, if they did. It doesn’t make sense. If there are records of me, why not of them?”
“You’re just registered as ‘foundling,’ my dear,” Mr. Cleat said, looking at her sympathetically. “Parents unknown. Your good Miss Ackerbee simply had your name.”
“But you told me you had my birth certificate,” said Tess, frowning. “How can you have one of those if my parents didn’t register me?”
“It’s a mystery all right,” Mr. Cleat replied lightly. “I suppose things work differently when you’re a lady like Miss Ackerbee, well known for taking in strays. Rules get bent, so on and so forth.” His tone seemed to suggest he’d said all he was going to say on the subject for now and Tess squashed back her frustration as he continued. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question. Aren’t you happy here, Tess?”
“I—um. Well, it’s very nice,” Tess said, her voice small.
“That’s good,” Mr. Cleat replied. “Is everyone being kind to you? Mrs. Thistleton? Her staff?”
Tess glanced at him, but his eyes seemed interested, even kind. “Yes,” she answered, not quite truthfully. Mrs. Thistleton, Tess had often thought, was a very well named woman. Everything about her was thistly, even her hair.
“I’m pleased,” he said with a sigh. “I wish I could say the same. Mrs. Thistleton doesn’t seem to like me at all.”
“What do you mean?” Tess asked. From what she had seen, the opposite seemed to be true.
“Oh, you know—I’m always late for this, or late for that, or not eating a proper dinner and filling up on pudding, or working too hard, or not working enough. I simply feel like I can’t win.” He gave another heavy sigh.
Before she knew it, Tess found herself grinning. “Well, you do eat a lot of pudding,” she said, just as they reached the dining room.
“There’s no such thing as too much pudding,” he declared, pushing open the door. “Now, speaking of which. Are you ready to tuck in?”
Tess followed him into the room, feeling awkward. “Can I ask one more thing?”
“Hm?” Mr. Cleat turned, his eyebrows raised.
“When can I go home? I mean, to Ackerbee’s. For a visit,” she asked. His mouth fell open and he frowned as she continued. “You promised I could. You said I could go whenever I wanted.”
“Ah.” He scratched at his chin and Tess got a look at his ring again. The letters engraved on it, she now saw, were I and H, intertwined; she wondered, briefly, what they stood for. “I did, didn’t I?”
“I just miss my friends,” Tess said, realizing as she said it how true it was.
Mr. Cleat’s frown smoothed out. “Friends come and go, Tess. I think you need to draw a line underneath that part of your life. Your future lies elsewhere now.”
Tess stared at him. “What? But—”
“You’ve been through a lot lately, don’t forget,” he interjected, and something in his tone made Tess’s skin prickle. He walked to the head of the table, pulled out his chair and settled himself into it. “You’ve had a lot of upheaval, all at once. It would be best to avoid even more of it, wouldn’t you agree?”
Tess pulled out her own chair. The lightheartedness of a few moments before had gone, like a candle snuffed out, and she began to wonder whether it had ever existed at all. Everything keeps shifting, she thought. I wish things would just be, without changing—but nothing seems real here.
“Perhaps we can think about it in a month or two,” said Mr. Cleat as Tess sat down. “Let’s get you settled in first and then we can see. It may be that Miss Ackerbee is too busy to write and she wouldn’t welcome a visit. Perhaps she’s trying to help you, Tess, by giving you the freedom to move on. I’ll bet that’s what it is.”
Tess simply stared at the empty plate in front of her.
Mr. Cleat forked a syrup cake onto her dish. “Let’s hear no more about it for now,” he said, licking some treacly ooze from his thumb. “Get stuck in. They’re better when they’re warm.”
Tess poked at her cake while Mr. Cleat polished his off and helped himself to a second, and she wondered if he was right: her mind had felt out of focus since she’d arrived at Roedeer Lodge, and it was spinning now. She was in a strange new place. Perhaps it was only to be expected that she’d be confused and unsettled—and anyway, going back to Ackerbee’s wouldn’t change the fact that she’d have to return here in the end.
“May I leave the table?” Tess asked after a few minutes.
“You have free run of the house, Tess,” Mr. Cleat replied, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He gave her a smile that was warm but short-lived. “You don’t need permission.”
She pushed back her chair. “Thanks,” she muttered. “For the cake.” Mr. Cleat nodded, spearing the last cake with his fork. He waved her goodbye with it.
Tess left the room and wandered toward the black-and-white tiles of the front lobby. It felt like a hundred years had passed since she’d first seen them. She checked her pocket for the note with the phone number of Ackerbee’s on it, and that was enough to bolster her spirits. I will get back, she told herself. I will. Despite what he says, I know where my home is. I know what’s real.
Just then the sudden clang-clang of the front doorbell shattered the silence of the house. Tess yanked her hand out of her pocket and ran.
Tess hurtled across the floor toward the front door of Roedeer Lodge as the bell jangled a second time. Finally! I’m going to get to the post before Mrs. Thistleton! But as she reached the inner doors leading to the vestibule, the housekeeper appeared from behind a large potted plant, armed with a damp cloth and a vicious expression. Tess leaped back as though she’d been stung.
“Miss de Sousa,” the housekeeper said, running the cloth over one of the plant’s wide, glossy leaves.
“You even dust the plants?” Tess gasped in disbelief.
Mrs. Thistleton simply sniffed in reply, tucking the cloth under one arm as she reached out to unlock the front door. The postman stood on the step, a bundle of letters in his hands. It was tied with string and all Tess could see were the backs of the envelopes, which gave no clue as to what address these letters bore—nothing to add to Tess’s meager knowledge of where she was.
“Just this?” Mrs. Thistleton said, and the postman nodded.
“No parcels today, missis,” he confirmed.
“Very good.” Mrs. Thistleton began to close the door again.
“Wait!” Tess shouted, trying to push past Mrs. Thistleton. “Is there anything for me? From Miss Ackerbee? Of Ackerbee’s Home for Lost and Foundlings?”
The postman looked away from Tess and glanced toward Mrs. Thistleton. He looked back at Tess again with guilty eyes.
“I—er. I don’t believe so, miss. No.” He cleared his throat and pulled his cap down low before turning away, his steps crunching over the gravel.
“Wait!” Tess called. “Please!” But the man was already through the gate and locking it behind him. He gave Tess one last look and then climbed into the cab of his van. It trundled down the road and out of sight, its steam engine hissing.
“I’ll thank you to get out of my way,” Mrs. Thistleton said, bumping against Tess, keeping the bundle of letters tight to her chest.
“It’s been almost three weeks!” Tess said, barely aware she’d spoken out loud. “Why hasn’t anyone written?”
Mrs. Thistleton stood at a table in the vestibule, deftly flicking through the post. “Children are fickle, I suppose,” she said in a light tone. “They forget. Perhaps you thought you were more important to them than in fact you were.”
Tess turned to face her. “Wilf would never forget me.”
Mrs. Thistleton looked up and gave a thin-lipped, short-lived smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to
go through this correspondence and sort Mr. Cleat’s from mine. I’m sure you have plenty to do to keep yourself entertained in your…laboratory.”
“So there is nothing for me?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Thistleton said with a slight sigh.
“Please can I just look? For myself?”
“No, you may not,” Mrs. Thistleton said, turning her nose up. “And close the door, please. You’re letting in a draft.” She turned away and began to cross the lobby, her shoes click-clacking on the tiled floor.
“Did you even send my letters?” Tess called after her, but there was no response. “Of course you didn’t,” she said to herself as she banged the door shut. She closed her eyes and put her hot forehead against the cold metal of the lock, then pulled the door open again. She strode out of the house, pulling her cardigan tight around her body. Violet, nestled above Tess’s collarbone and almost hidden by a swath of her long dark hair, stirred as if in protest at the sudden change in temperature.
Tess crunched her way across the gravel driveway and looked back at the house. The windows of its upper floors flashed as they reflected the sunlight, and ivy rustled in the slight breeze. All was still and Tess knew she couldn’t bear to go back inside. She’d never had more space to call her own than she had here, but she had never felt so trapped.
Then an idea popped into her head. “It’s about time we went on an expedition. Right, girl?” she whispered to Violet, who perked up, curling a leg out of Tess’s collar as though testing the air. Tess turned and made for the garden. It was bounded by a neatly clipped hedge, and at its far end there was another gate, which gave way to the scrubbier, more overgrown property beyond. Tess made straight for it.
She kept an eye on the house as she picked her way around the perimeter of the garden. The gate was padlocked shut, the iron bars themselves rusted with age and neglect, but beyond it Tess could see rolling greenness and a distant tree line. Mrs. Thistleton had told her she was never to go beyond this locked gate but it was too tempting to resist.
“Ready, Violet?” she whispered, and then, pulling her skirt up over her knees, Tess began to climb. She placed a foot on a curl of ironwork at the bottom of the gate and hauled herself up, using an overhanging branch to get high enough to sling one leg over the top. Quickly she dropped to the ground on the far side of the gate, where she caught her breath, wiped her hands on her cardigan and looked around.
She found herself in a field, the grass almost to her knees and heavy with moisture. Before long she had reached the trees, their branches so old and thick with leaves that they almost touched the ground. She turned and saw that she had almost lost sight of Roedeer Lodge—just the tops of the turrets and the bristle of chimneys at either end of the roof were visible beyond the high hedge around the garden, and the gate Tess had climbed was hidden among the shadows. Facing forward again, she stepped through the crackling undergrowth to see a sheltered path, long unused, which led away through the forest. She took the deepest breath she’d taken since she left Ackerbee’s.
Suddenly she felt Violet stand to attention.
“What’s up, girl?” she said, keeping her voice low. Violet simply thrummed in response, like a plucked string. Tess kept walking, and ten steps later, she finally saw what the spider had spotted.
A turn in the path led toward an old ivy-choked building buried amid the trees like something that had fallen from the pocket of a passing giant. Its roof was domed, with a segment missing from it almost like a cake with a slice cut out. The building was octagonal, with a tall pointed window on each face and a door that had been beaten open a little, either by bandits, or the weather, or both. Tess was cautious as she approached.
She paused to pick up a fallen branch as she drew close to the door and she hefted it in her right hand as she used her left to push the door all the way open. Tess tumbled through into the interior of—of what exactly?
Four long wooden benches sat on either side of a narrow aisle, facing a raised platform of bare stone with a window stretching above it. Once, the window had probably been filled with color and light; now it was dirty and broken, branches poking through the smashed pane. A rickety worm-eaten lectern sat at one side of the platform, most of its boards missing.
Tess looked around. Each of the windows on the eight faces of the building was made up of small, intricate colored panes, though they were dull in the shadow of the overgrown trees. The whole place was filled with windblown leaves and dotted with rancid pools of rainwater, and some of the ceiling boards near the back had fallen through, giving an unnerving glimpse into darkness overhead. Tess had the sensation of space and silence up there, and the softness of decay. She put her branch on the floor as gently as possible, finally understanding where she was.
It’s an old chapel, or something similar, she thought, a smile breaking over her face for the first time in what felt like days. It doesn’t look as though anyone even knows it’s here anymore. “And it’s perfect,” she whispered into the silence.
In a bower seat in an otherwise empty garden, Tess was sitting cross-legged. In her lap was her borrowed copy of The Secret Garden and she looked to be reading it. Her eyes were tracing the lines and her hand occasionally turned a page, but she hadn’t taken anything in for the last chapter or two.
It was strange; when she was supposed to be thinking about the object, the book proved a huge distraction, but whenever she tried to read the book, all she could think about was the object. She’d spent hours in the old chapel the previous day examining the small metal object in as much detail as she could manage in the dim light, but she’d discovered nothing. She’d been sure that finding the space to think freely would lead immediately to a breakthrough, but it seemed things weren’t going to be as easy as that.
She sighed. Dear Wilf, she wrote, in her mind. Today was just as boring as yesterday, and that was every bit as boring as the day before. I wish I’d never come here. I wish I’d never left you. I wish—
“Nice day for it,” came Mr. Cleat’s voice, intruding on her thoughts.
Tess scrambled to undo her folded legs and sit more properly, dropping her book in the process, and Mr. Cleat laughed. He bent to pick it up, wiping a little loose soil from its cover.
“Ah. The Secret Garden,” he said, handing it back to her. “One of my favorites too. This was mine, as a boy.”
“Yes,” said Tess, who could hardly admit to being halfway through it with no knowledge at all of what it was about. “It’s, um…very good.” She settled herself on the seat and Mr. Cleat nudged in beside her.
“Can I ask what drew you to it?” He turned to her with a strange look in his eye, like he wanted to laugh but didn’t want to offend her and was doing his best to hide it.
Tess shrugged. “No real reason. I liked the picture of the girl on the cover and I like gardens…” Her voice trailed off and she couldn’t help but feel silly.
“Don’t go digging up my flower beds looking for buried keys now,” he said with a note of good-natured teasing in his voice. Tess smiled but looked away as quickly as she could. Her gaze fell on Mr. Cleat’s hand, outstretched on his knee. His ring with its mysterious engraved initials glinted up at her from his smallest finger.
“I’ve seen you observing this before,” Mr. Cleat said, lifting his hand. “Sadly it doesn’t come off anymore, or I’d let you take a closer look.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Tess replied, feeling her face grow hot. She and Mr. Cleat hadn’t really spoken since he’d told her she couldn’t visit Ackerbee’s and something inside her was still bruised from that encounter. She hoped he’d be going soon.
“Can you make out the letters?” he asked, holding his hand toward her. He nudged the ring with his thumb, from behind. “They’re a capital I and H, linked together.”
“Yes, I see,” said Tess, glancing politely. “Someon
e’s initials?”
“A lost love?” Mr. Cleat said with a chuckle. “Nothing so poetic, I’m afraid. They are the initials of a club of which I’m a member. I was a founding member, in fact.”
“Oh?” Tess said, hoping she sounded interested.
“It stands for the Interdimensional Harmonics Society,” Mr. Cleat continued, despite Tess not having asked him to. “Have you heard of it?”
Something uncomfortable prickled behind Tess’s ear and it took her a moment to realize it was just Violet. “Um,” she began. “No, I’m afraid not.” She allowed Violet to crawl onto her hand before depositing the spider on top of her head.
“It’s a science, I suppose,” Mr. Cleat said, pausing only briefly as he watched Violet’s movements, as though unsure whether she was going to fling herself at him, fangs bared, or not. Once it seemed clear the only thing Violet was hunting was a comfortable place to nap, he relaxed. “A type of experimental research,” he continued. “Into alternate realities.”
Tess felt like someone had sucked all the air out of the garden. Her ears began to ring, faintly at first but rapidly growing louder. “I—I beg your pardon?” she managed to say. Her heart started a rapid thunk-thunk-thunk as she tried to stay calm.
“I know it seems nonsensical,” Mr. Cleat said with a chuckle. “Alternate realities? Who could possibly have any interest in such a dusty theory? Yet it seems there’s life in the old dog yet. Our membership numbers hold steady, year on year. We’re hoping 1941 will be our best year to date.” He waggled his ring-bearing finger in front of his eye, as though trying to make the letters dance. “But why am I boring you with all this?” He placed his palms flat on his thighs, getting ready to push himself into a standing position. “I should leave you to your reading.” He nodded at the book and gave Tess a quick smile.
“No—wait!” Tess said as Mr. Cleat began to rise. He turned back to her, looking surprised. “I am interested. What does it mean, alternate realities?” She blinked and tried to look simply curious, instead of bristling and on her guard.
The Starspun Web Page 6
