The Slanted Worlds

7

What doth my mirror show?

It showeth not what a man looks like but what he is.

Not what he sekes for but what he hath found.

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

The diary of Alicia Harcourt Symmes:

After the strange demise of my dear papa, and now that I am truly his heiress, I think it would be a suitable tribute for me to continue his diary. His name was John Harcourt Symmes, and he was a Victorian gentleman of science, in those distant days when the study of the occult could still be scholarly, and respectable. Unlike now, where I am called a foolish woman and people smirk at me behind my back.

I knew hardly anything about him until the day the letter came.

I was a young girl of 19, living a quiet life with my aunt and uncle in the rectory at Charlecote Thorpe in the county of Yorkshire. It was a remote, windy hamlet on the moors, the nearest town ten long miles away. I had lived in that dingy and depressing house since I was eight, the year when my dear mama passed over to the Other Side. She had separated from Papa very early in her marriage, and no one ever told me why. I was kept in complete ignorance. It was never even spoken of by my aunt and uncle. I could only suppose there had been some terrible scandal, some wonderfully thrilling disgrace. Mama had even reverted to her maiden name of Faversham, though in secret I practiced my true forbidden name over and over in my books in childish handwriting.

Alicia Harcourt Symmes.

It had a refined sound to me, even then. It made me feel like a different person, as if I had some hidden dark mirror image of myself.

I was an isolated child. Not ill-treated but certainly unloved. It was clear to me my aunt had only taken me in out of duty to my dead mother. I had only my dolls to play with, as the village children were thought too rough and uncouth to come to the house. Sometimes I used to peep at them from between the heavy velvet curtains, as they ran on the moor and small scruffy dogs chased after them. I envied them their wild fights, their screeching arguments, their real families. Because, though I seemed outwardly a quiet and reserved child, respectful and silent in company, the truth was that I was seething with rebellion.

I loathed my life!

Maybe that was why I was fascinated to learn more of my father. Once, coming very quietly into the room, I heard my aunt in conversation with one of her cronies, the curate’s wife, and she was saying: “. . . My dear, he experimented in the occult, in fiendish, terrible things Of course, he was a most depraved and villainous creature. How my sister came to fall under his spell remains the sorrow of my life. Do you know, they say at one time he even kept a girl from the streets and she actually became . . .”

Then they saw me, and fell silent.

How I pondered those words in the curled cave of my bedclothes! How in secret I would imagine and dream of my father! Depraved and villainous! I shuddered with delight. I pictured him tall and devilishly handsome, with a curled mustache, and I prayed that one day he would come in a great carriage and whisk me away from the tedium of the dull dark house, to Paris, to Rome, to London!

But he never came.

Instead, on my twenty-first birthday, the letter arrived.

Sarah spread the photocopies of the Dee manuscript on the kitchen table. Piers had enlarged them, so that the page of scribbled drawings, the tangles of coded words, could be seen more easily.

Venn picked one up and examined it.

“Total and utter gibberish.” Wharton turned a copy, not even sure which way up it should go. “I mean look at this. A tower, a bird-mask, some sort of crane? Then an equation. Then a scratchy picture of what might be, well . . . a man on a horse?”

“A centaur,” Venn muttered.

“Well, maybe. But what does it all mean? How can this help us get Jake back?”

Venn flicked a glance at Piers. “Any idea?”

The little man looked at the page almost hungrily. “Not yet, Excellency. But I’d love to have a go. Puzzles! I love puzzles.”

Venn frowned. “Be quick. We need the information.”

He turned to Sarah and she faced him. That sharp blue gaze they both had, Wharton thought. How hadn’t he seen before how similar they were?

Venn said, “So. My great-granddaughter.”

Sarah knew there was one question that had burned in him since their last meeting; he asked it at once, unflinching. “Is it true that Leah comes back?”

She looked away. “In my history, she didn’t die in a car crash. But I don’t know details. All our family documents were lost in the fire, or Janus took them. But that painting of her—the one you have in her room? We still had that.”

“So I’ll succeed.” He seemed numb with relief, dizzy with disbelief. He glanced at Wharton, then back at her. “If only I knew how. As for what happened with Summer . . . I’m trusting you, Sarah. You have to help me. When Leah is back, I don’t care about the mirror. You can blow it to smithereens if you like.”

He turned and went to the door.

“What about David?” she said.

He stood stock-still, as if he had forgotten the name. “Yes, David. David too. Of course.” He went out. A moment later they heard the front door slam.

“He’s not going to the Wood, is he?” Wharton said anxiously.

Piers shrugged. “The estate has many footpaths. He’ll roam up on the moors for hours.”

“That Summer creature gives me the creeps.” Wharton turned to Sarah. “Come on. We need to check the mirror.”

On her way out, she looked back. Piers had seated himself at the table. He had poised a lamp over the papers and was making hasty notes with a long red pen. From nowhere he seemed to have found a green visor to shade his eyes.

“Looks like a newspaper hack,” Wharton said.

She smiled. As she closed the door, three of the cats jumped up and sprawled on the table, mewing for food.

“Get lost,” Piers said absently.

The house was silent and musty. As they walked its corridors, they passed through slants of pale light from the windows, watery with tiny running raindrops.

“It seems so empty without Jake,” Wharton said.

“Yes.”

To her it seemed as if an air of hopelessness, of damp decline, had invaded the place. She paused beneath a pale square of paneling. “There was a painting there Christmastime. Surely?”

“Venn sold it last week. Piers boxed it up and I took it to the station. It’s being auctioned in Christie’s.”

“So he’s short of money.”

“Sarah, he’s out of money.”

She shook her head. As Wharton led the way up the wide, curving staircase, she thought of how the Time-wolf had once slunk up here, its eyes sapphire fragments. On the landing, the ancient floorboards creaked.

The Long Gallery stretched before them.

They walked down it, but Wharton stopped abruptly before a bedroom door. “Reminds me. There’s something you might be able to help me with, because the damned beast won’t even look at me.”

He led her inside.

Jake’s bedroom.

It had been his father’s, and he had moved in there. His clothes lay on chairs, on a heap on the floor. His laptop sat on the mahogany dressing table.

Wharton pointed up. “Horatio. Quite lost without his master.”

She saw the marmoset. It was huddled in a heap of misery on the very top of the great curtain rail. It spared her a miserable glance, its tiny face screwed up.

“Horatio!” She reached up, her voice soft. “Come on. Come down.”

The creature turned its face away.

“Just won’t eat,” Wharton said gloomily. “If Jake gets back and finds him dead, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Suddenly he turned to her. “Though what if he never gets back, Sarah. What if . . .”

“Don’t panic.” She kept her voice firm. “Of course he will. Pass me that chair.”

It took ten minutes to coax Horatio down, but the grapes she found proved too enticing, and finally he jumped into her arms with a screech and snatched the fruit.

“Brilliant.” Wharton was delighted. “I knew he’d like you.”

She clambered down. The marmoset’s fur was soft and lustrous. It looked up into her face and chattered. Then it took another grape, held a handful of her hair, climbed onto her shoulder, and sat there, sucking. Its tail was a soft tickle around her neck.

She turned. “Right. Let’s go to the mirror.”

At first she was amazed that Venn had left it unguarded. Then, as she ducked through the viridian web that was spun about it, she noticed the new bank of security devices, the alarms and laser-thin beams of light that Wharton held her back from.

“Venn is more and more afraid of theft. Getting paranoid. There’s the control panel, and they’ve wired it up like the crown jewels. If there’s any sign of Jake coming back, the whole house will probably explode with alarms. This is what the portraits are paying for. We can’t go any closer than this.”

Sarah hissed in frustration. “Crazy.”

“Maybe. But that thing scares me . . . It seems to have a life of its own.”

The obsidian mirror.

It leaned, facing her, a dark sliver of glass in its jagged silver frame. In the angled shadowy surface, she saw a slanted image of herself, and her own face looked different, subtly altered. The mirror showed her herself, but for the first time a stab of doubt pierced her—did it show what was there now, or were its reflections warped and rippled through by time, so that she might be seeing herself seconds ago? Or did the mirror show not only the outward form but how a person felt? Their emotions? Their soul?

Wharton was talking. She dragged her attention back.

“. . . can do about any of it. I never thought I would miss that infuriating, arrogant wretch.”

She realized he was talking about Jake.

“Jake can look after himself.”

“So could his father. But what if we never see him again, Sarah?”

She patted his elbow, and walked as near as she dared to the network of lights. “Don’t worry. Keep believing. Gideon will find him. He promised.”

Wharton snorted. “If Summer knows that, Gideon might be torn into pieces by now.”

“You really have to . . .” She stopped. A brief glimmer, like lightning. “What was that?”

“What . . .”

“Did you see!”

She felt him hurry beside her. “I can’t see anything except . . .”

The mirror flickered.

For a brief, terrible moment it was not even there. They were in a place of utter darkness, the air a choking dust; all around them and over their heads, a crushing, suffocating mass of rubble and brick.

Sarah gasped.

Wharton swore.

Then the mirror was clear.

“What . . . where was that!”

Sarah stared at the obsidian glass, seeing her own eyes, wide and startled. She stared into the fear that the black hole had reached even here to engulf the world.

“That was death,” she whispered.

Jake sat on the wooden bed and gazed around the cell.

This was no police holding room—this was prison. They had brought him in a black police car, the bell on the roof jangling, and at least four heavy metal gates had clanged behind him. The air was stale and sour, the muted sounds of voices and the clatter of dishes marking other distant prisoners.

But it was still too quiet. Prisons should be noisy. He wondered if the military held him now, or whether Allenby had managed to keep him in his own custody, whether the blurted promise to tell all had tempted the man.

He scowled up at the cobwebbed ceiling. What a mess. What could he say? If Alicia had been running a spy ring, what the hell did he know about it?

He felt weary and out of ideas. His head ached and he was bitterly hungry—the empty plate by the door hadn’t been filled for hours. He would have given real money for a hot shower. Clean clothes. Even a toothbrush.

He scowled.

This was useless. All he needed to do was examine the room, learn the routine, make plans.

The prison that could hold Jake Wilde hadn’t been invented yet!

Ten futile minutes later he knew that it had.

And that he was in it.

On a gray day in early June my uncle summoned me to his study.

He said, “Well, my dear. It seems that today you finally come into your inheritance.”

I was astonished. “My inheritance?”

He cleared his throat. He seemed a little nervous. “Indeed. You see, it is exactly ten years to the day that your father had his, er, unfortunate demise.”

“He died? On this day?”

“Well . . . that is . . . An experiment must have gone wrong. The room was quite empty after the explosion. He could never have survived, of course, but his body must have been . . . entirely . . . My dear, I do not wish to distress you. Such details are not for ladies. Let us say his body was never found. Which made legal difficulties, as you must know.”

I sat tense with excitement. “I don’t know. No one has ever told me this before.”

“Er . . . yes.” He was very uneasy. My uncle was a small man, usually quivering with self-importance. I began to feel a strange hope creep over me.

He glanced down at a cream vellum envelope that lay on the desk. “A letter has come for you. I of course opened it, as your guardian.”

I gripped my hands together in anger. “I will take it now.”

“There’s no need. I will explain . . .”

I stood up. “I will take my letter, Uncle.”

He looked a little startled. I took up the missive and opened it eagerly. As he strode to the window and stood with his hands behind his back, harrumphing at the dismal scene, I read these fascinating words.

Messrs. Queenhythe and Carbury

Solicitors at Law,

Staple Inn, London

Madam,

I beg to inform you that my client, your father, Mr. John Harcourt Symmes, is from this date legally declared deceased and that his estate, house, and chattels now revert to you.

Should you or your representative care to apply in person to our premises, we will supply you with all further details.

May I offer my congratulations on your good fortune, and commiserations on your loss.

I remain, Your most humble and obedient servant,

Marcus Queenhythe

I held the paper with trembling fingers. I could nor believe what I was seeing. My dull life of drudgery was over. I was an heiress!

My uncle turned. “I will of course set off immediately. The London house will need to be sold, and any money—”

“No,” I said quietly.

“I beg your pardon?”

I drew myself up. This was a moment I had dreamed of for years. I was not going to lose it now.

I said, “No, Uncle. I shall take the train to London myself tomorrow.”

“You! You’ve never been out of Yorkshire in your life . . .”

“Then it’s time I did.” I folded the precious letter. “As for my father’s house, it will not be sold. I intend to live there.”

He gaped. “A single woman! In London!”

“I will be quite able to afford a servant.”

“I utterly forbid it!”

Coolly I pocketed the letter and looked straight at him. “Uncle, you may bluster as you please. I often wondered why you took me in, when it was clear you had no love for me. Now I see that you must have been waiting eagerly for this day all along, thinking to obtain my father’s money. Well, I thank you both for all your . . . care . . . over the years. Rest assured I will repay all the debts you may have incurred on my behalf. But tomorrow, by the first train, I will leave.”

The years of humiliation and timidity and boredom were over!

As I marched to the door and closed it firmly I looked back and saw him mop his bewildered brow with a white handkerchief. “Bless my soul,” he breathed.

Needless to say I lay awake all night in a trembling terror.

But next morning, bag in hand, my heart quaking with fear and excitement, my head held high, I climbed aboard a train for the first time in my life and set off.

For London!

Immense, brilliant, terrifying labyrinthine London!