Her Perilous Mansion

by Sean Williams

  ‘If anything happens, wake me,’ Etta told him.

  ‘I will. You’ll do the same?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, Almanac, I hope this is the right thing to do.’

  ‘Look at you, swaying on your feet. And I feel the same. There’s nothing else we! can do, now, except sleep.’

  ‘I know, I know. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Etta went into her room and closed the door. There was a nightdress folded neatly on the bed and a warm brick between the sheets, like someone had known which room she would choose. Was that magic too?

  In truth, she didn’t know much more about magic than Almanac. Dizzy (Disaster) had revealed just enough to drive her mad with curiosity and no more, so the bulk of her impressions came from stories and books, plus the occasional fragment of news that filtered down from grown-ups. Powerful sorcerers were rare, even more prized than scientists to the powerful and rich, and far more terrifying when they wanted to be. Youth revealed their Talent (or no Talent at all, in her case) the moment they learned the art of the pen, which was why every child started writing lessons as early as possible. Most that showed signs of the Talent were apprenticed to women like her to learn basic skills. A lucky few were taken in by the University of Wonders, where the greatest sorcerers on Earth were trained. They strode in splendour, it was said, and no one dared stand in their way. Conjuring up a plain nightdress for a humble maid would be nothing to them.

  Slipping into the narrow bed, Etta promptly forgot about everything that troubled her and was asleep within two breaths.

  Almanac had a harder time of it. He wasn’t used to new pyjamas or pre-warmed sheets, or the pitch black that would await him after blowing out his candles. Etta’s talk of magical spells had deeply unnerved him, for it ran counter to the orderly world of masters and servants he had expected to inhabit in Spoilnieu Manors, or whatever it was called. Since arriving, all he had found was uncertainty.

  The kitchen nagged at him, too. First thing in the morning, he would clean up the mess they had left down there. And then …

  When you have seen the cellars, Doctor Mithily had said, you will know what needs to be done.

  He did know, in his heart. He had always known. The cellars needed to be put in order, so until Mr Packer or someone else told him otherwise, that was what he would do. And if there was more to it than that – a method to the old cellarmaster’s madness, as Doctor Mithily had phrased it – then that would be a bonus.

  Having a job and a future, he told himself firmly... that was the important thing.

  Plan in place, he felt better, and in moments he too was soundly asleep.

  The house settled around them, falling very nearly into silence. Outside, no owl hooted, no cricket chirruped. No mice scuttled in the undergrowth, and no frogs croaked. The night was as still as the grave.

  ‘They might be the ones to do it,’ shivered a fragile woman’s voice from the shadows of the smoking room.

  ‘Pray you are correct,’ said Ugo, sending a thread of ash falling featherlight from the chimney, ‘or I will never forgive you for what you did to me.’

  Olive tapped once in agreement, and then all was quiet.

  Etta woke with the answer to the riddle in her mind. Perhaps she had been thinking about it in her sleep. She did that occasionally, like the time she woke up knowing that her eldest sister Mel (Melancholy) was in love with the woodcutter and made everyone mad by mentioning it over breakfast.

  Turn right could mean only one thing, and she was stupid not to have seen it earlier. As soon as she was able to, she would go downstairs and do exactly what Doctor Mithily had intended her to do.

  First, though, she had to dress, relieve her bladder and clean her teeth.

  On further consideration, she decided that only one of these was absolutely essential, and once she had done that she knocked on Almanac’s door and told him to wake up and come with her to the sunroom at once.

  ‘What?’ Wrenched from a dream about trying to write Josh a letter but discovering that he no longer knew his alphabet, he stumbled downstairs after her, rubbing his sleep-filled eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see!’ She skipped gaily ahead of him in her nightdress, too full of her own cleverness to stop to explain.

  ‘Ugh.’ Almanac’s bare feet flinched from the cold floors, which had the undesired but necessary effect of waking him up. ‘This had better be worth it.’

  ‘Aren’t you a charmer in the morning!’

  The sunroom was just as they had left it the previous night, except it was now aglow with daylight. Occasional clouds painted the sky with enigmatic shapes, permitting the light from the sun to come through in waves. Outside, the garden looked lush and well cared for, if a little autumnal for this time of year. Under a nearby walnut tree, Almanac saw overnight frost clinging tenaciously to the shadows.

  ‘What do you want to show me?’ he asked Etta, who was waiting by the phonogram, dancing on her toes with excitement.

  ‘Turn right – remember?’

  ‘Of course, I remember,’ he said, pointing at the panelled wall, ‘but there’s no room for a library there—’

  ‘Watch.’

  She reached over to the phonogram and turned its felt platter once, to the right.

  A mechanism clicked near the fireplace, allowing a whole panel to swing away, revealing a deep alcove beyond.

  Etta clapped. ‘I knew it!’

  Almanac stared in amazement, quite awake now, and no longer feeling the cold. ‘You did indeed. Well done! No, after you.’

  Grinning, she preceded him into the library. It was about the same size as her bedroom upstairs but lined with shelves that went right up to the ceiling, which was painted blue and white to look like the sky. Each shelf was packed full of books of all colours, shapes and sizes. The air was pleasantly perfumed with the smell of paper.

  Etta held her nose to stifle a sneeze as she turned about to take it all in. ‘Glorious!’

  ‘So these are magic books?’ Almanac said in fascination. ‘They don’t look any different from ordinary ones to me.’

  ‘Why would they? Writing is writing and books are books. The only reason sorcerers use weird languages sometimes is because most people can’t read them, and that helps to keep a spell from being read and therefore undone.’

  He accepted that readily enough, and thankfully didn’t ask any other questions. Aunt Aud was no Sofia Phronesis, her talent being confined more to the sealing of contracts and pursuance of writs than bringing down armies or restoring ruined cities to vibrant life.

  Peering closer, Etta saw several titles she recognised. The Maddening Crown. Mesmerelda. A Complete Works of Ewen Hiller. Two copies of An Engagement of Equals. Mostly adventures, romances, comedies, children’s fables, a few in marbled covers but nothing obviously sinister or arcane.

  As her gaze passed along the shelves, seeing only more of the same, she began to wonder if she had truly found what she sought. She could smell paper, yes, but not the distinctive, inky smell of magic at work.

  ‘Oh, but these really are just ordinary books!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘There must be something important in them, or else they wouldn’t be hidden.’

  ‘Hmmm. Maybe the spell is dormant or better hidden than I thought it would be. I guess that means we’ll have to search through them to find it.’

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘You will have to search. I’ve got something much more important to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Make breakfast.’ He hurried off before he could become embroiled in her scheme, reflecting that combing the library for clues could take days – at least as long as tidying up the cellars, the chore he had been assigned by Doctor Mithily. They could work on their separate tasks easily enough, but not if they were famished, or freezing from lack of fires, or dressed for bed.

  Midway through getting into his uniform, he heard Etta coming up the stairs to do the same.

  ‘I’ll cook,’
she said. ‘You’re on cleaning duties, remember?’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘because I only know how to make toast.’

  ‘How do pancakes sound?’

  ‘Like heaven!’

  Feeling much refreshed from his morning toilet – there was a toothbrush for each of them and tooth powder as well – Almanac set to cleaning up the evening’s dishes while Etta made new ones.

  Or rather, he put mysteriously clean dishes away, dishes that had been left dirty the night before but were now spotless, as were the smudgy kitchen corners where he hadn’t erased the last traces of Ugo’s ash-fall. Had someone cleaned up while he and Etta slept? If they had, why didn’t they make themselves known now?

  The pipes rat-a-tatted. ‘Good morning from us both,’ said Ugo with muffled cheer. ‘There is a note from Mr Packer on the butter churn.’

  Almanac put the mystery of the dishes aside to read the short letter addressed to him.

  Dear young Almanac –

  How well you have acquitted yourself thus far!

  Carry on, carry on. I remain tiresomely preoccupied, but you have my full endorsement.

  Sincerely,

  Mr Packer, Head Butler

  ‘That’s encouraging,’ said Etta when he read it aloud to her. Again, she smelled nothing magical about the note. ‘If he didn’t want us to explore the library, he’d tell us not to, right?’

  ‘Exactly.’ This was his opportunity to inform her of his plan to work in the cellars, not in the library with her. ‘I think that’s what I’m meant to do. I’ll tell you if I find anything to do with the spell.’

  ‘Likewise,’ she said with an encouraging punch to his shoulder. ‘I have no doubt we’ll figure this place out.’

  They went their separate ways after breakfast, Almanac armed with candles and matches and Etta with her wits, a pencil, and several sheets of paper. The books in the library didn’t appear to be in any order, which might in itself be a clue. Her first task was therefore to make a list of the titles in the hope that a pattern might emerge. Ugo kept her company, sharing songs he had enjoyed around campfires with his family, sung in his own language. He didn’t miss his old life, he said, for it had been hard and full of injustice, like hers, but he did miss the traditions.

  The melody of one particular tune and the rhythm of its unfamiliar words captured her ear. When she asked Ugo to tell her what it was about, he said:

  ‘It is the story of a famous sorcerer, Sogoro, who leaves his caravan to earn the heart of the king’s daughter, Turul. The journey is long and hard, but his quest is worthy. When Sogoro arrives at the palace, the king grants him an audience.

  ‘‘‘How came you so far?” the king asks him. “You must have used magic to burn through the dark forest that lay in your path.”

  ‘‘‘No,” says Sogoro. “I made a fallen branch into a staff and walked around.”

  ‘‘‘What about the bottomless lake? Did you conjure up a boat?”

  ‘‘‘No. I took a drink from a nearby stream and swam across.”

  ‘‘‘Then what about the mountain? Surely you required sorcery to fly over its icy summit.”

  ‘‘‘No. I made a fire with the aid of two stones and climbed.”

  ‘The king is disappointed not to hear tales of magical adventure. Not only does he dismiss Sogoro’s desire to meet Turul, but he sets his three greatest knights against Sogoro to see if that will make him use his powers. Sogoro does not fight. Instead, he flees, pursued by the three knights and the king’s mocking laughter.

  ‘The king’s daughter, Turul, follows too. She watches as the first knight is buried in an avalanche, the second drowned in the lake, and the third crushed under a fallen tree. She comes to love the man who has earnt the respect of nature, not the sorcerer who would bend it to his will. He is waiting for her at his caravan. She accepts Sogoro’s offer of marriage and lives amongst the travelling people still.’

  ‘That’s a good one,’ she said, replacing a copy of Year of the Raven, having entered it onto her list. ‘What’s the lesson?’

  ‘Does it have a lesson?’

  ‘It sounds like it ought to.’ She wrote down the name of the next book.

  ‘This is true. Stories are magic, but the opposite of the normal kind. The more you tell them, the more powerful they become. What do you think the lesson might be?’

  ‘That running away doesn’t always make you a coward? Or maybe it’s that actions speak louder than words?’

  Ugo chuckled at this. ‘For a chambermaid, you are very wise.’

  ‘I sincerely hope so,’ she said, looking down at her list, ‘because I’ve not made much headway here so far … ’

  Had she seen the enormity of the task facing Almanac downstairs, she might have felt better about her own efforts.

  Dusting off his hands, Almanac surveyed the growing pile of rubbish he was building at the rear of the manor. Sixteen loads he had carried upstairs in a box he had found, and there were many more to come. Thus far, he was doing little more than moving refuse from one place to another, but that was how great feats were accomplished, as the mistress liked to say: one unpleasant job at a time.

  Heating pipes clattered at him when he trudged back inside. Olive was helping him pass the morning by teaching him her code of taps and knocks. Already, he had the alphabet memorised up to the letter Q, along with simple patterns that stood in for commonly-used words such as ‘Ugo’, ‘two’ and ‘and’. When Olive tapped at full speed, he was quickly lost, but knew that he would fully understand her soon enough. It was just a matter of concentrating on the rhythms and remembering the rules. He had never been exposed to new languages before, but his mind was perfectly suited to learning them.

  ‘Yes, hello again,’ he said as he began scooping up the next load. ‘What’s that? Something-I-LA-something. That’s an S? Oh, Silas! C-A-N: can. H-E-L-P: help. D-I-S-P-O-S-E-O-F-something-H-E-something-something-B-B-I-S-H. Silas can help dispose of the rubbish? Yes! That would be very kind of him. I’ll keep piling it up and he can bury it or burn it or whatever he thinks best. It’s no use to anyone anymore.’

  Indeed, it wasn’t. He was beginning to suspect that everything in the cellars could be disposed of, no matter what Isaac, the old cellarmaster, had once claimed, but he retained some hope of finding items more useful than his shovelling-box. It was unrewarding work, and the memory of pancakes had long faded before he felt that he had done enough for one morning.

  Putting aside the box, he went upstairs to wash his hands and check on Etta, who curled up her nose in distaste at the smell he brought with him.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘you can take that away right now.’

  ‘Nothing to report?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, with a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll send Ugo if I do find anything. Now shoo, and don’t expect dinner until you’ve had a bath!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He retreated up the hall, intending to return to the cellars but stopping on meeting the locked study door. Feeling a guilty twinge, he knocked, hesitantly, once.

  ‘This had better be important!’ came the bellow from the other side.

  ‘Just checking, Lord Nigel, if you require anything—’

  ‘Only to be left in solitude! Surely there is something useful you ought to be doing?’

  Almanac was happy to oblige him, detouring just one more time to pick up the telephone in the lobby. Remembering how Etta had operated it, he turned the handle and waited for the sound of bells from the East Attic.

  The phone rang once. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello, Doctor Mithily,’ he said. ‘This is Almanac, um, speaking. I thought you ought to know that Etta has found the library, and I’ve started cleaning out the cellar.’

  ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘You are doing well so far.’

  ‘But we haven’t got through the gates yet, and you wanted us to see the sign, didn’t you? We could drop the rest if that’s more important—’

  ‘You have be
en here but one day, Almanac. The quest for knowledge need not be speedy, as long as it’s steady.’

  He heard the click-and-hiss of disconnection.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Did that mean he had asked a question that didn’t need answering or one that Doctor Mithily couldn’t answer? It was impossible to tell. Continuing on his present course was the likeliest solution, if the grubbiest one, and he headed back to the kitchen in order to do just that.

  Thus, overnight they settled into a routine: Etta in the library, hunting for the spell, and Almanac in the cellar, hunting for whatever it was Doctor Mithily wanted him to find. Daily, Etta’s notes grew longer and more intricate while at the rear of the manor the piles of rubbish mounted up. The latter were removed by Silas, Almanac presumed, though he never saw him, and what happened to the rubbish, exactly, Almanac never found out.

  When not devoted to their allotted tasks, Etta and Almanac performed ordinary chores, such as cleaning their clothes, which they undertook rather than raid the unused finery in the house’s bulging wardrobes. Otherwise, their life was much more comfortable than either had experienced to date. They cooked, ate, slept and bathed at their own schedules, with no one to boss them around or tell them they were worthless. They could even play games from the nursery, if they wanted, although they rarely agreed on which to choose out of cards or checkers. After Almanac’s regular evening bath, they went for walks outside, wending through the walnut trees in search of ruins or extra manors, and never finding any. The grounds were expansive, containing an overgrown kitchen garden, a dried-up lake, and empty stables with arched doors that had once been painted bright red.

  Not once in a whole week, however, did they find the gate open, nor any other exit, no matter how hard they looked. The wall was made of roughhewn granite blocks, fitted together without mortar, uniformly grey from top to bottom. Jagged stones made a forbidding prospect for anyone trying to climb it. Both Etta and Almanac made the attempt, but the wall was slick with damp and moss, and they earned nothing but scrapes and split fingernails as a result.