Obsidian Mirror

6

Christmas at Wintercombe—how wonderful! The great Christmas tree in the hall, the masses of presents, the vast arrangements of holly and ivy and mistletoe all down the stairs and decking every windowsill. The whole house warm with the smells of baking and sweetmeats. I am living in a dream, my dear!

Letter of Lady Mary Venn to her sister, 1834

SARAH WAS EATING toast in the kitchen the next morning when Piers came in. He had some cartons of milk and a newspaper, so he must have been to the village. How had he gotten there and back so quickly? She glanced anxiously at the paper. Then she said, “So who are they?”

“Who are who, exactly?”

“The man and the boy. They arrived last night. They’re still here. And Venn—he didn’t come back. He’s been gone all night.”

Piers arranged some breakfast things fussily on a tray. “You’re an observer, Sarah. That’s very good. His Excellency will need that. But don’t get ahead of yourself. He does what he wants, and I assure you, no one is safer in the Wood than Venn.”

She frowned. He was avoiding answers. “What about the others? If they find out about me…”

He was already working at the ancient range, pouring milk onto porridge. “They won’t. The boy is the son of an old friend of Venn’s who’s turned up out of the blue.” He looked over, a quizzical glance. “They’re not local. They don’t know anything about you. You’re quite safe.”

Unsatisfied, she sat at the empty table. It looked as if it had been made for a staff of forty. She pictured the room crowded with servants, bustling around the vast chimney, so big, you could sit on a bench inside it. Down from its blackened stones hung a collection of spits and pans and copper pots, all too heavy to lift and coated with a frosty soot. Spiders had constructed elaborate cities of web among them. Three identical black cats snoozed on a chair in a heap.

She pushed the toast crust around the plate. “Can I explore?”

“Please do. It’s an ancient, rambling house. But don’t go—”

“To the Monk’s Walk. I know.” She looked up. “Is that where it is?”

He smiled. “It?”

“This Chronoptika.”

Piers did not pause in his rapid stirring, but maybe the spoon circled a little faster. “You’ll find out about that soon enough. Patience, Sarah.”

She got up and clattered her dish into the scullery sink. “So what about you? Are you the last of the staff or something? There were dozens here once—butlers, footmen. Maids.”

“You sound as if you’d seen them.”

She shrugged. “Even crazy girls read books.”

The small man gave a odd chortle of laughter and picked a scrap of soot out of the porridge. “Do they really? Well, as for me, I’m His Excellency’s slave. He rubs a lamp and I come out of it. He whistles and I appear. He bought me in a market in the wastes of the Kalahari for thirty camels and a bottle of whisky. He freed me from the eternal spells of an island sorceress.”

Was it a joke? If so, it was a bitter one. She said, “You work for him?”

“He owns me.” Piers voice was acid.

She didn’t know what to make of that. “You’ve been exploring with him?”

“Many times. In the Andes. In Antarctica. He always loved to travel. You might say we put a girdle around the earth together.”

She decided to try her luck. “But that all changed when his wife died?”

Piers stopped stirring. He turned and she saw all his quirky humor had gone. “A word to the wise, Sarah. Never speak to Venn about Leah. Do you understand?”

For a moment she stared at him. “This is such a house of secrets. Is he so scary?”

“His anger is never pleasant. But the truth is, he’s eaten up with grief and shame. I don’t want you adding to that.”

In the corridor, a bell rang. To break the moment, she went and looked out. There were two rows of bells in the corridor, old spiral coils, each with the name of a room above it in faded gilt letters, almost worn away. But she knew them. The one that was trembling said South Breakfast Room. She came back, disgusted. “Do they think this is some sort of hotel?”

“Maybe they do.” Piers had the porridge, toast, and tea on a tray. “And maybe we’ll indulge them for the first morning. Why don’t you take it up.” He held the door open. “You can see the fierce boy and the shrewd teacher for yourself.”

Jake watched Wharton pull the bell again. “You’re wasting your time. He’s not going to treat us like guests.”

Wharton sighed and came to the table. He leaned his arms on it and gazed out through the window. The bitter night had left the lawns coated with a stiff, frozen rime. If you walked on it, he thought, it would wheeze and crack underfoot. He said, “Sleep well?”

Jake shrugged. In fact, he had tossed and turned until well past midnight, twice sitting up wide awake and alert, listening to soft creaks and movements somewhere deep in the unknown house. He said, “Being under the same roof as my father’s killer makes it hard to relax.”

“Jake, you have to rid yourself of this obsession.” Wharton turned to him anxiously. “You really can’t…”

“No?” He took out the folded letter. “This is my proof. Don’t tell me to forget, sir, because I never will. If you want to leave, leave. I can look after myself.” He laughed, bitter. “After all, I’m safely home now.”

Wharton sighed again and scratched his rough chin. He hadn’t slept well either. The house was uncomfortably damp and cold, the water had been too icy to shave with, and, oddly, neither his room nor the bathroom had a mirror.

“I’m going to find some food.” Jake jumped up and crossed the room, flinging the door open. He walked straight into a girl with a tray, who gasped and almost dropped it. They both grabbed at it. Cups and saucers slid. Porridge slopped hot on Jake’s hand.

The girl snatched it from him. “That was so stupid! I could have dropped the lot!”

He stood back. “But you didn’t.”

She pushed past him and dumped the tray on the table. Jake watched her. She was small and agile, her white-blond hair cropped short as a boy’s. She wore jeans and an old purple top that was too big for her, the sleeves rolled up. She had a pair of striped woolen gloves on, and a scarf, as if the house were perpetually cold. And someone else’s shoes.

“Porridge!” Wharton was delighted. “Fantastic. Toast! And honey!” He began to unload the tray. “I hope we haven’t put you to too much trouble, Miss, er…”

“Piers made it.”

Jake came over and sat. “Your uncle.”

“…yes.”

He didn’t miss the hesitation. He said, “Horatio. Come down.”

The marmoset swung itself from the filthy chandelier, dust and spiders raining after it, and landed on the table. The girl gave a sharp cry, almost of wonder. Horry screeched at her, took a piece of toast in a dainty paw, and began to nibble.

“Is that a monkey?”

Her utter disbelief astonished him. “Haven’t you seen one before?”

“Yes, of course. Only…is he yours? Can I touch him?” Sarah stretched out her fingers with a wary joy and the monkey sniffed at them.

“Give him some toast.” Wharton held some out, and as she took it and offered it to the monkey, he flashed a glance at Jake, who looked as if he was thinking the same thing. She had obviously never seen such a creature before. Indeed, it was as if she had never even imagined one could exist.

“That’s enough. He eats too much rubbish as it is.” Jake came and took Horatio onto his shoulder.

Sarah dragged her gaze away from the wonder of the animal and looked at the boy. He clearly thought a lot of himself. He was tall and dark-haired, and his clothes, as far as she could tell, were expensive and carelessly worn. He was also rude and sullen. Her first instinct was to dislike him.

The teacher was another matter. A big, powerful man, he was tucking into the breakfast with a hearty joy and talking all at once. “This honey is so good. You should try some, Jake. And the bread! Freshly baked. Mr. Piers is an excellent cook.”

“I’m not hungry.” Jake turned to Sarah. “Why don’t you show me around.”

He seemed consumed with restlessness. She shrugged. “If you like.”

He was already disentangling the monkey’s grip from his neck. She had a panicky second of worry. She hadn’t had a chance yet to see how different the house would be, but she could bluff. And it would be a chance to find out more about them.

“Have fun,” Wharton said. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Sarah.” She opened the door and went out, quickly.

“This is the Great Hall.” She led him under its pale rafters. “It’s Elizabethan. I think the paneling is all original.”

Jake said, “I don’t want the official tour. Where’s the furniture?”

She was wondering about that too. The tiled floor was almost bare. “I suppose Venn’s sold it. Must be expensive, keeping this place going.”

Jake snorted. “My heart bleeds. He’s got enough money to keep me at Swiss boarding school.”

“Maybe you’re the reason he had to sell the furniture.”

She glanced sideways, but if he felt anything, he wasn’t showing it.

The hall was an icebox. Tiny icicles hung inside the mullions of the windows, as if the damp had dripped and solidified in the long night. Someone—probably Piers—had made a loose arrangement of red-berried holly and trailing ivy on the wide sill. A black cat sat next to it, watching them.

“You’re limping,” Jake said.

“Oh, that’s nothing. A blister.” He was observant too, she thought.

They explored the ground floor. The rooms were small and nearly all paneled with intricately carved woodwork, hanging with swags and carved faces. The corridors were long and dim, the floorboards creaking noisily underfoot. Nothing in the house was straight; everything leaned or tilted; even the floors sloped, and Jake had the unsettling feeling that the Abbey was warping almost as he walked through it. Great sideboards held pewter cups and bowls; the lighting was weak; from the small casement windows he glimpsed the green gloom of the Wood through tangled tendrils of ivy.

Sarah walked in front, amazed. She had expected the Abbey to be neglected, and uncomfortable, but not like this. It was filthy. Curtains rotted where they hung, some so threadbare, they would dissolve at a touch. Ceilings dripped into buckets, plaster was damp and in places sprouted whole gargoyles of green mold. The smell of mildew clung in the air.

Below the stairs, Jake looked at the bare spaces where portraits had hung. “Has it always been like this, or this since…his wife?”

She shrugged. “It would have been splendid once. House parties, people, servants, warm fires. Especially at Christmas.”

They came out into a stone passage that led to the cloisters. This was familiar; Sarah opened the doors confidently. “The oldest part—it’s medieval. The real Abbey, where monks once lived.”

Jake saw pointed arches and pillared columns, a vaulted arcade leading around in a great square, open to the sky. It was littered with chopped wood, a wheelbarrow, a rusting bicycle. “Other people have garages. Venn has a cloister. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I don’t think that’s possible, is it?” She just wanted to get rid of him now. “This,” she said, “is the watermill,” and flung the door in the wall open, knowing the spray from the great whirling wheel would soak him to the skin.

“Really?” he muttered.

The wheel was a ruined shell. It rotted under years of algae.

She stared at it. Jake watched her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She slammed the door and hurried on.

He strode after her. “How long have you been staying here?”

“Weeks. I’m working to get some money, and help Piers out. What about you?”

“Like I said, a school in Switzerland. Now I’m back.”

“Seems like Venn wasted his money.”

“Sorry?”

“Well, you’re hardly grateful, are you? Do you mean back for good?”

He stared at her, hostile. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing.”

They went frostily together up the back stairs. He wasn’t easy to shake off, she thought; even silence didn’t dent his self-absorption. Then he said, “Where’s Venn’s room?”

She had no idea. “Probably off the Gallery.”

“Show me.”

She led him to a turn in the corridor and they went around it and stopped.

Jake stood still. “Wow. As Rebecca would say.”

She smiled, secret. Everyone was impressed by the Long Gallery. Wider than a corridor, it was a room that ran the whole length of the building, maybe a hundred meters long. Old hessian matting covered its oak boards. The white ceiling was pargeted with scrolls and cherubs, and there were the familiar statues she had almost forgotten, in a comforting row on their pedestals of wood. It was dim this morning, as if frost had crept in and fogged the air.

“You all right?”

He was looking at her. She realized her eyes had pricked with tears. She shrugged. “Cold,” she snapped.

They walked down. Jake looked closely at the glass cases of books, the sculptured busts. She caught him glancing at his own reflection, slanted in the sunlight, and hers, behind.

He said, “Were you here, when my father disappeared?”

“No. I…” A cold shiver chilled her, as if a draft passed through the room.

They both turned, as one.

The room had whispered.

The sound had come from the far end of the Gallery, a faint, distant sibilance. Damp air drifted in the dark spaces.

“What was that?” Jake stared, intent.

“I don’t know.”

He listened a moment, then walked quickly down; she caught up with him. “I don’t think…”

He didn’t stop. “Scared?”

“No.” Her eyes glanced back, along the row of locked doors.

The oak boards creaked. There was a different smell down here, a musty stench of decay. She saw that the white ceiling was ringed with watermarks.

Jake stopped.

In a narrow embrasure a wooden panel leaned. At first he thought it was a painting, so with both hands he lifted it and turned it around.

Light flashed and slid.

He saw himself, angled.

It was a wooden framed mirror, its surface so mottled with age that it was patchy and blurred, dark nebulae obscuring his face and eyes.

He leaned the frame against the wall. “Just a mirror. Which is odd because there aren’t any other mirrors. I haven’t seen one in the house. Why is that?”

The answer was not hers. It was a whisper so close, both their hearts jolted. A choked throaty gasp. And the fog in the air seemed thicker, and Sarah knew with sudden fear that it was oozing from the glass. She said quickly, “Turn it back.”

Jake ignored her. He touched the glass, fingers to fingers. And then he gave a cry of terror, because the hand he had thought a reflection of his own caught hold of him and jerked him close.

“Jake,” his own face hissed. “It’s me. Dad.”