The Slanted Worlds

19

My dark devyse is the portal into which my soule hath journeyed. I fear I have given myself up to its mercies as to a demon. As to a dark angel.

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

HE ONLY REALIZED he was standing in the middle of a road when the donkey reared up in his face and whinnied; in an instant Rebecca had hauled him aside, and they both fell into the gutter, crashing against the hot stone curb.

Jake gasped. “Are you all right?”

“Bruised.” She was rubbing her elbow, there was dirt smudged on her cheek. Then she looked up.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Jake.”

The heat.

The heat struck him like a blow.

He saw a street too narrow, the houses too high. The bricks were tawny, the roofs red tile. Above them scorched a sky bluer than ever possible in London.

The smell of sewage, of olives, of incense, burst onto his senses. And the donkey cart had a driver, who had leaped down and was kneeling now, crossing himself with terror, screaming out “Demons! Fiends of hell!” in a dialect so garbled Jake could barely recognize it.

Rebecca clutched at him. “Jake.”

“Don’t talk. Keep quiet. That’s Italian.”

“You know what he’s saying?”

“Dad worked in Rome. We lived there when I was small.”

He could not believe this. This was all wrong—and, early, so early! The people who came running from the silent buildings, who flung open shutters and stared down at him, were dark-eyed and olive-skinned. He knew, with a rush of joy and terror, that the mirror had betrayed him again.

“Demons!” the driver screamed.

“No. Please.” Jake summoned his Italian. “We are merely visitors. We startled you. Please.”

It was no use. He realized that as he saw Rebecca turn and face the crowd that was gathering fast as rumor, as he looked at her ridiculous Edwardian clothes, his own dark suit. Slipping the bracelet as far up his arm as it would go, he said, “Run!”

They turned, dashed two women aside, hurtled around a cobbled corner.

Into a line of armed men.

Jake hit the ground; Rebecca screamed. Scrambling up he saw that one of the men had hold of her, and was laughing at her struggles. Her hat was off, her long red hair whipping free.

The men stared and whistled. They seemed amazed. One made a sign with his hand, against evil.

Jake leaped up. “Leave her alone. Let her go!”

Almost casually, a man dealt him a blow with the flat of his weapon that sent Jake sprawling, astonished with pain. He gasped for breath, got on hands and knees, was kicked flat again.

The crowd roared. Rebecca screeched, “Jake!”

As if her voice had released it, silence fell. Someone spoke, a sharp bark of command. At once the crowd fell back, slipped away, fled. The line of soldiers parted, and through them came a man on horseback, wearing a gown of black and gold and a hat of some red velvet wound elaborately about his head. His hair was dark and glossy; his nose curved like a hawk’s beak. He looked as though he had ridden out of some pre-Renaissance painting.

He drew rein and said, “Fall back. Disperse the citizens.”

Breathless and aching, Jake scrambled up. Rebecca grabbed him. She looked terrified, but kept silent.

As the soldiers cleared the streets Jake tried to think. They were in trouble here. Dire trouble.

“Who are you?”

The question was calm, but this man was clearly used to getting all the answers he wanted. For a crazy moment Jake was reminded of Inspector Allenby.

“My name is Jake Wilde, signore. This is my . . . wife. Rebecca.”

He registered her tiny gasp but ignored it. “We are travelers from a far country.”

“Where? Your speech is most barbaric.”

“England.”

“Ah. That is a distant island.” The man clicked his fingers. “Is the climate there really a constant fog so that the sun is never seen but on the morning of Easter Day?”

Jake risked a small smile. “Almost, signore.”

Behind the man now were others, a group on foot. He saw priests, a cardinal in red, a gather of well-dressed men. No women anywhere.

He said, “May I ask whom I address?”

The horseman said, “I am Federico Altamana, condottiere of the army of this city. Why are you here? To trade?”

Jake swallowed. Then he said, “In a sense. We heard of a sickness that has come to this place. We’ve heard how it spreads.”

The men murmured. He heard the words il morto negro. Rebecca squeezed his hand in a desperate warning. But he ignored her.

“In my land we have knowledge of many medicines and cures, many cordials and tinctures. I have come to bring this knowledge to you, and the friendship of my king . . .”

“Edward the Third,” Rebecca breathed.

“Edward, King of England and France.”

He was exhilarated. He was making this up out of half-forgotten history lessons and both their lives hung on it, and yet the danger, the threat, as always, filled him with a wild, reckless excitement.

The horseman turned his head and beckoned.

Rebecca gasped.

Out of the crowd came a man in the strangest mask either of them had ever seen. Of loose gray fabric, it hooded the face, was slitted for the eyes. Out of it hooked a great beak like some vulture, dark as a crow, sinister and bizarre.

“Where are your medicines?” the signore demanded. “Where are your king’s gifts? Your entourage?”

“At Pisa, unloading from the ships. We came at once, before them. We hear that many are dying here already.”

He flicked a glance at the masked man. A pair of bright eyes stared back at him.

The Man with the Eyes of a Crow.

The signore nodded. “That is unfortunately true.” He considered, then said, “Il dottore will take you to the monastery. I hope you will be able to help us. But this sickness is not so great. It affects only the poor and sinful. It will pass, as all sickness does.”

Jake frowned. “It may become a great plague.”

The signore leaned from his saddle. “Let us hope not. I await your king’s gifts. If they do not arrive, you will pay for your lies.”

He smiled amiably, jerked his head to his men, and rode on. The armed men fell in behind and followed, gazing at Jake and especially Rebecca with curiosity. She tucked her hair up into her hat hurriedly.

Only the masked man remained. He beckoned, and turned into a dark narrow alleyway stained with pools of ordure. There he unlocked a small door and bowed; they went through before him, uneasy.

Inside was a dark room, lit by one candle. The bird mask turned to face them, was lifted off, and they saw a gray-haired man with an open, weary face staring at them with undisguised terror.

Jake could hardly breath. He whispered, one word, one syllable, and it was like a light coming back on in his heart.

“Dad.”

When Wharton finally slid and floundered as far as the buried sheepfold, he found Venn standing with folded arms looking at it with suspicion.

“Come out,” he snapped.

For a moment Wharton thought the man had really gone mad. Then Gideon stepped from the shelter of the dark stone. The changeling was pallid and shivering. His forest-green clothes seemed to have faded; they were gray here, becoming white, like a stoat’s fur changes in winter. And there was something fading in the boy too, Wharton thought. As if in some way he was becoming transparent, less solid.

Wharton said at once, “Where’s Sarah?”

Gideon pointed at the ruin. “She went in there. She vanished.”

Venn said, “What’s wrong with you? What’s Summer done to you?”

“Stolen my sleep. Stolen my dreams.” Gideon sat in the snow and dragged his hands through his tangle of hair. “The only place I could go to get away.”

Venn nodded. “She’s a mistress of torment.” He looked at the ruined byre, touched its black stone, trudged a complete furrow around it in the snow. Then he said, “Why didn’t you go in?”

Gideon looked up. “I . . . was going to. Then I saw you.”

“Liar.” Venn crouched and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “You know where she is because you led her here. Summer wants the bracelet, doesn’t she?”

“What bracelet?”

“The one Sarah stole from me.”

Gideon’s blank stare was only too convincing. “She doesn’t have it.”

Wharton said, “But . . . Are you sure? . . . Then who could possibly . . .”

The silence rumbled. It shivered and shook under his feet. As he and Venn glanced at each other it was as if the earth groaned, the mountain was ready to collapse on them.

“Jake,” Venn breathed.

Did the word start the avalanche? Was the weight of that knowledge the tiny trigger? Because as they all turned as one, the white wall of snow was already crashing toward them, coming like a line of foam, like a wave that would flatten and destroy anything in its path.

Venn seemed frozen. Wharton heard him whisper, “Not again.” Then he spread his arms wide, as if he would stand there before it, defy it, die.

“Oh no!” Wharton grabbed him and shoved him with all his strength toward the doorway of the ruin. Venn toppled in backward and was gone as if through a plane of light.

Wharton yelled at Gideon, “In!”

They had no choice. As the white mass hit, it filled the world with a roar that smashed them against each other, a tangle of limbs, and clutching of hands, a suffocation of snow as hard as marble. Just before it hit him Wharton felt the momentum alone fling him head over heels.

Into blackness.

My father stirred his tea.

He sipped it and then leaned back in the armchair with a sigh of pleasure.

“Cake?” I said.

“Oh my dear.”

“Éclair? Or Battenburg?”

“Éclair please. All that lovely squishy cream.”

I lifted one with the silver tongs and placed it on his plate. As he munched it and the cream fell on the napkin tucked under his chin, I sat back in my chair with as much satisfaction as I ever remember feeling in my life.

“And so this Moll lived with you for ten years?”

“She did. Little terror that she was. She ate my food and drank my whisky and developed into quite a beauty, if all be told. And she was up to every scrape and trick and strategy under the sun.”

I felt a squirm of jealousy, but suppressed it. “And all the time I was buried in that house in Yorkshire.”

“Your mother took you away. She didn’t trust me, I’m afraid. And then we were so busy searching London for the silver bracelet. We were so sure it must be there! Moll—poor girl—was also convinced that Jake Wilde would come back and take her to the future. But he never returned.”

“Did it break her heart?” I said, I must confess, hopefully.

“Perhaps. After a year or so she stopped looking out for him. But I don’t think she ever forgot. And then one spring morning she slipped out of my house and never came back.”

I sniffed. “Once a street girl, always a street girl.”

“Maybe.” My father looked thoughtful. “But maybe not. Six months later I received a letter with a roll of banknotes tucked inside it. Three hundred pounds sterling—a mighty sum. The note said simply TO JHS: FOR ALL WHAT YOU GIVE ME. It must have been her. I dare not think how she got it.”

“She could write?”

“I taught her. She was a remarkably able little thing.”

I had heard enough about Moll. I dismissed her from my mind and said, “I wish you could tell me more about the future.”

He seemed uneasy. “I understand now the reluctance of David, when he worked with me, to speak of it. I saw little—Janus kept me in the same room, and I was only there for a few hours. Even so, it was a cold, bleak place.” He leaned forward. “Do you know, I do not believe they eat?”

I recoiled in mock horror. “Not eat?”

“Never was I offered one mouthful. I believe they take a pill of some essential nutrients each morning. It would save a lot of time.”

I proffered the cake-stand again. “But it would not be much fun, Papa.”

He selected a Coffee Kiss. “Indeed not, Alicia.”

I sat back, and looked across at the obsidian mirror, where it leaned, safely veiled in the corner of my room. For a moment I had felt that someone was there within it, listening to us. I said, “Do you think I was right, to save you in that way? By telling the tyrant Janus what he wanted to know?”

My father licked coffee cream from his lips and dabbed them with the napkin. “My dear, you had no choice. And from what I know of David Wilde, and what I saw of Oberon Venn, they are men of resource and capacity.”

He put the cup back on the tray. “Not to mention the arrogant and cocky Jake.”

He looked at the mirror, and smiled a rueful smile.

“Your career has been most adventurous, my dear. Truly, you are my daughter.”

I could not help a sigh of satisfaction.

“Will Jake come for the film?”

“I have no doubt he will.” He leaned forward and took my hand. “And when he does, we must be ready for him.”

There was no interval between the snow and the room, but she felt as though she had traveled miles and centuries to get there.

Slush slid from her shoes onto the deep crimson carpet.

A trickle of icy melt water ran from the ends of her cropped blond hair into her eyes.

Her hands dripped. She felt the chill of the high plateau thaw in her.

The room was warm and silent. It was high-ceilinged, the walls papered with an elaborately flowered design. In the vast hearth a fire roared over logs piled high and spitting.

Portraits lined the walls.

Sarah moved. She hurried to the fire and huddled over it; then she stripped off her soaked coat and scarf and gloves and boots and knelt in front of the flames until they scorched her skin and eyelids. The heat was glorious.

Only when she was warm through did she take a good look around.

Tall candelabra stood in the room, each with dozens of candles burning. They burned with a cool unchanging light. The candles did not flicker, and didn’t grow any smaller. The windows were curtained with drapes of amber, tassels of knotted cord.

Around the walls were portraits, in frames of gold. She stood and walked under them, her feet deep in the soft carpet.

They were all of Summer.

Summer in a white dress. Summer in a crimson robe. Summer in a ruff and gown, her face lead-painted like some Elizabethan queen. Summer in a 1960s mini shift of black and white stripes, laughing out of the frame.

Sarah frowned.

Turning, she saw the table. It was laden with food, plates piled high with lobster and fish and spiced meats. A row of tureens stood there; she lifted one, and the vegetables steamed below.

She replaced the lid.

“You know, that is a very old ploy,” she said aloud. “It’s in every fairy story going.”

No answer.

Then, in the corner of the room, she saw it. It sat on a small white table, a circular table smooth as the snow slope had been.

She crossed to it, reluctant.

The table was covered with a scatter of small objects. A bone, an acorn, a gold ring, a pile of white pearls like pebbles.

And among them, on small balled feet, a box.

A small lidded box with a key in its lock.

A box covered with red brocade.

She looked around.

The room was silent, the door closed, the windows shuttered.

She reached out.

She opened the box.