Chapter Ten
Vansel, having made his way from Mickel’s warehouse to the Mermaid, was less than amused when he got there to find Jack’s room empty. Esme soon filled him in on the happenings of the morning, Jack’s request for ‘common’ clothes and his ensuing jaunt into town with Jem.
“Esme!” Vansel remonstrated.
“I know, Vansel, but what could I do? The boy pays no heed to me.”
“If you had refused him – If you had – I don’t know, locked him in his room or something...” Vansel shook his head.
“He would have gone straight to the window and shinned down the drainpipe as you very well know! Be sensible, dear, do! He might be one of your aristocratic lordlings but that doesn’t mean that he’s anything more than a mischievous boy when the mood’s on him!” Esme sighed. “I did the best I could; I’ve sent Jem with him. He’s too polite to get rid of Jem, and Jem’s too slow and stolid to get up to larks, for all he’d probably like to.”
“You’re right, of course, but if I go grey before my time it’ll be because of that young rapscallion!”
“And where do you think these white strands come from, my boy?” she teased, gesturing at the few greys in her own brown hair. Vansel pulled a face at her. “Don’t you worry, Jem will see him safe. In fact-” she glanced out of the window and put a hand to her mouth, “he’s dashing up the hill at this very moment, and it looks for all the world as if he’s chasing three girls!”
“What?” Vansel jumped up to look. “Those clothes you gave him have brought on a bit of a change of behaviour! Did you soak them in oysters?”
They watched in amusement and slight unease as the four got to the top of the hill and staggered into the tap room to collapse in a gasping heap on the bench.
“But where’s Jem?” Esme wondered. Vansel gestured back down the hill to where her husband, too winded to jog any further, was walking back up, a certain grim determination in his deliberate strides. Looking at that gait, Esme shook her head. “Something’s happened and Jem thinks it’s trouble. We’d best go find out.”
Blakey hurried up the path from the bay hidden in the cliff. He would have preferred to go back to his own rooms but they were above Copeland’s offices and he could not face the moneylender after the events of the morning. Blakey was fairly sure that Copeland was putting him in the way of the deadly Angel Feathers because he knew damn well that his bodyguard was addicted to the drug.
Blakey had struggled for a long time to keep his consumption low. Initially he could not afford to buy much of the drug, but of late he had found himself spending more and more time leaning on the rails of the gallery over the drying rooms. It was very relaxing to watch the workers at their manufacturing, but he had not stopped to wonder why. Now he knew; it was the dust of Angel Feathers that hung in the air, which he had been breathing in, but he could not have breathed in enough to be affected yet, surely?
He paused. He needed to know. He needed a mirror... Perhaps rather than going to the Three-Legged Dog he would go to the Black Cat. Yes, that was it. He could take a glass of wine, look in a mirror to assure himself that his face was as it always had been and there was nothing of the Angel’s elfin influence to it, and then he would hire a room and sleep until nightfall. Once upon a time this might have had repercussions from Mr Copeland, but of late the man was spending more and more time out of the office. Where he went, Blakey neither knew nor cared so long as he was not anywhere near him. He staggered into the brothel, overshadowed by the low, turbulent sky, and the door slammed shut behind him in the sudden wind.
The slam of the door made Madam jump. She cursed under her breath and then glanced at Nereia, where she got a second shock. The girl’s eyes were open and she sat up suddenly, but at this angle Madam could not see who was looking from those eyes.
“Blakey is in the building,” Nereia said, and it was as if there was an echo to those words in the small, cosy room. Slowly and ponderously, she moved over to the mirror. There was an indefiniteness about the picture in it that made Madam’s head swim so that she had to look away.
“Blakey is in the building,” she said again, considering, “and Mary and Hanna are at the Mermaid with Bet. Mickel is worried. You should tell him that they are there.”
“Nereia?” Madam was not at all sure that that was the girl’s voice.
“I am here,” the girl replied with an effort, “and so is the other one. I shall not stir until you get back. I have more to do before that other is under control. Better to lock me in, I think.” Madam stared at her. She would not for all the world have contradicted the younger woman at this moment. “And, Madam?” Nereia’s voice sounded suddenly her own again, tired and strained, but very much Nereia.
“Yes, dear?”
“Take something waterproof for the girls. I can’t hold the storm off for much longer.”
Madam stared; but that blurred gaze slammed down like a shutter and she backed out the door, more unnerved than she had been in many years. Had she unleashed something terrible? Madam was horribly afraid that the only thing between the implacable being and the rest of the world was one weary girl.
She grabbed a couple of oilskin cloaks from the hooks by the door and dashed off to the Mermaid. She would go, because if anything could help Nereia it was knowing that Mary was nearby; but she would have to hurry. If the implacable being won, Madam was determined to be the first thing to get between it and her girls.
Copeland sat in his office. It was odd, he thought, that sometimes it seemed so easy to think and other times his thoughts rolled away from him like marbles.
“What will you do now, little man?” whispered that voice that seemed to insinuate itself into his thoughts.
“I don’t know, that’s the whole point!” He shook his fist at the empty air, further irritated because he didn’t know which direction to aim at. “Where are you, anyway? You spend the whole time whispering in my head and you know all the things I’m thinking about and I don’t know where you are or who you are!”
“Then come.”
“Come where?” There was no answer but he felt a strange kind of pull guiding him down the stairs and along the road. Oh yes, very clever it was too, with all that whispering in his head and making him do things. He let out a strangled giggle, then clapped both hands over his mouth. No-one had better hear that. They might think it was strange. He would tolerate no disrespect.
“But is it disrespect if it’s true?” He slid the long, sharpened blade he had filched from the fishing sheds into the sheath on his belt. It was very complicated, and all these logical knots made his head ache. He sidled out the door, closing it quietly behind him, and slipped into the maze of backstreets around his office. He didn’t know just what it was at the moment, but he had developed a great dislike of being on the main roads where people could see him. Somehow it seemed much more natural to be unseen, silently making his way along the alleys like the flood of the night tide to - where? He did not know yet, but the sibilant voice would tell him just as soon as he got there and then at last he would know who or what it was that was making his thoughts scatter so.
He paused in what had been a doorway before the inhabitants had left; now it was just a dark hole in a tumbledown building. The obscurity of it was seductive. He wanted to go in and lurk there like an octopus in a hole... but the pull in his mind was insistent and he had to go past. He found himself wondering about that. He had a very clear idea of what he meant and yet he knew with as much certainty as he knew anything these days that he had never seen an octopus in a hole. If he had ever seen an octopus at all it would have been chopped up in some kind of stew – which, haha, was far from whole! But he did not like the idea of octopus wriggling down his gullet. He did not like fish at all, never mind things with tentacles like an octopus, in or out of its hole. Still, that was what he would be, a lurking presence in
the darkness, unseen but suddenly erupting out when least expected. Yes, he liked the idea of that.
The pull was getting stronger now. It called him along the harbour road, which was far too public for his liking but at least had been emptied by the dark clouds, the gathering wind and yes - the first drops of rain spattered heavily on his heated face. Copeland fingered the razor-sharp edge of the knife until blood began to run from the blade. Unseeing, he went on down the road towards the brothel.
Blakey had staggered into the Black Cat just ahead of the rising storm. He shouted for wine, and when they brought it to him he gulped the glass in one go and then nerved himself to go find a mirror. Upstairs, he threw open the door of the first room he came to. Ignoring the cry of the man tied to the bed and the girl riding him, he went over to the mirror and looked in it for a long moment.
“No!” He dashed out into the corridor. It could not be right! He went into another room, this time pausing to pick up a lamp from the side, and looked in the mirror there. It was illogical to hope that what he had seen was simply a trick of the light but, he thought, maybe if he could see more clearly there would be no change to his face and he could go get another glass of the wine to celebrate having panicked unnecessarily.
The girls clustered at the door, watching as he set the lamp on the side and looked in the mirror, and opened the curtains and looked in the mirror, then took the mirror over to the window for what was left of the daylight, and looked again.
Finally he dashed the mirror to the floor so violently that the frame fell to bits and the glass smashed. His knees went weak; he sat heavily on the floor and put his head in his hands, unaware of the shattered fragments or the little trickle of blood down his face where a splinter had hit his brow.
“Shut him in for the moment and we’ll ask Madam what to do when she gets back,” one of the older girls breathed. Quietly they filed out, locked the room and went back downstairs
Madam hurried through the streets. As the rain began to fall in earnest, she paused to throw one of the oilskin cloaks over herself. Nereia had said there would be a storm. She skirted a muddy patch that would soon be a puddle, and hesitated at the end of the road. If she cut through the back alleys the way would be shorter but she’d be muddied to the ankle. Better to go the long way, to the market square and along the main road to the Mermaid.
She turned up the hill as the rain got heavier, but when she got to the square it was full of soldiers manoeuvring into formation, line after line after line of them. She had to stop and shelter in a shop doorway for a few moments as another squad came marching along, taking up nearly the whole width of the narrow street. Sergeants were shouting and gesturing, and the stamp of many feet hitting the ground at once echoed around, underlaid by the teeming rain. Madam watched in wonder for a moment, but did not have time to find out more. She waited till there was a gap and then slipped into the side-street, darting along the muddy lane to the Mermaid.
When she got there she dashed into the taproom, which was nearly empty. Despite the gathering darkness most of the inn’s guests had long since left to continue their journeys. Madam made her way over to the bar and rang the hand bell on the side.
After a moment, Jem appeared. “Can I help, Madam?”
“I’ve been told my girls are here - a redhead and a blonde, about fourteen, fifteen?”
“Mary and Hanna?”
“Yes. I have to get them back. The streets are awash with rain; and soldiers, bizarrely enough.”
“Soldiers?”
“Yes, hundreds of them, in the marketplace.” Madam shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought the army even knew where Scarlock was.”
“Come with me.” Jem led her into the kitchen where Mary, Hanna, Bet and Jack were being berated by Vansel. They all stopped dead when she appeared.
“So what happened to not going near any taverns?”
“Madam, we didn’t mean to.” Hanna leapt to her feet.
“They really didn’t.” Jack stood up to bow slightly.
Madam took in the scene. “What happened?”
Jem interrupted. “Begging your pardon, Madam. Vansel, the Colonel’s men are in the market place about two minutes from here.”
“I need to warn Alaric! Are the streets around the inn clear?”
“Yes, but for how long I couldn’t tell you.”
“Please don’t mention seeing any of us.” Vansel took a cloak from by the kitchen door. “It’s awfully important.”
“Very well, but I must get the girls back, and quickly!”
“Then don’t let the soldiers see them! They’ve already had one encounter and there are going to be questions asked - fifty gold guineas’ worth of questions!” He darted out the back door into the yard, nipped over the wall in the gloom and dashed along the alleyway behind.
Esme ran in. “Soldiers coming down the road! Into the cellars, the lot of you.” She saw Madam. “What-? Oh, it doesn’t matter, just get out of sight before we get into trouble! Where’s Vansel?”
“Just left - gone to Alaric!” Jack replied as they hurried out of the back door and into the barn.
Jem stopped in the inn to see where the soldiers were going. Esme guided the others to the back of the barn, shifted a barrel artfully hinged halfway through and then the trapdoor underneath lifted to reveal a ladder going down into blackness.
Mary backed away while Esme lit a lantern. “I don’t think I can go down there, Madam. It looks like that room...”
“Unless we’re more than usually lucky, the soldiers will have your description by now, my girl,” Esme snapped. “If they find you they’ll want information about Jack and they won’t be kind about asking.”
Madam took in the situation grimly. There was a great deal of shouting and noise from the inn. There was nothing else to be done. She took Mary’s arm. “Come, child; it won’t hurt you on this occasion.”
Jack took the lantern and started down the ladder. “I’ll go first.” He looked up at the pretty, frightened girl as she clung to the older woman. “I won’t let you fall.”
Mary blushed warmly, smiled as best she could and took a deep breath. Amongst the noise and shouting nearby, Mary, Hanna, Bet and Madam followed the boy down into the chilly vaults of Jem’s hidden cellar.
Nereia gazed into the mirror which did not show the lowering skies and pelting rain of Scarlock, but a shadowed landscape of silhouetted hills fading into a starless night, and fine, shifting bone-sands under a harsh moon.
“You are back,” her reflection acknowledged.
“Yes. We must have words.” Nereia reached out to the mirror. Her hand sunk into it to take that of her reflection and she felt herself pulled through. The mirror’s surface was as cool and still as water on her skin. She found herself on the sand and, as the other Nereia waited patiently, she stopped to gather her thoughts. How could she persuade a creature like this that there were rules it must obey? Perhaps if it thought that this was the means of getting what it wanted...
She didn’t have any better ideas, anyway, so it was as good a place to start as any. “This place - you said you needed me to fix it somehow. What would I have to do? If this is something I did before, how do I undo it if I don’t remember anything at all about it?”
The being considered for a long moment. “I do not know. That part of your being is not part of me. I do not have its memories.”
“Can you tell me how it happened?”
“No.”
“Do you know what caused it?”
“No.”
Nereia lost her temper. “Then what good are you?”
“Neither good nor evil, just as you are. If you mean to ask what use I am, I am here because you summoned me. I am protection of a sort.”
“And how do you mean to protect me?”
“I do not know that either.”
“Is there anything that you do know?” she demanded angr
ily.
“Yes,” it replied impassively. “Blakey is in the brothel. Madam is in the inn with Mary. And Copeland is coming towards you with a knife.”
Copeland scuttled along the alleyway in the increasingly heavy rain, as unaware of the mud and the puddles as he was of the trail dripping from his blood-sodden clothes to slowly dilute in the rain. The pull was stronger now, imperative, and he was excited. The voice in his head had not spoken again – it did not, very often, and he was glad because it made his head hurt, but he knew where it was as if the way had been marked out before him. As he neared the Black Cat he stopped. It felt like a job half-finished. But would the pull allow him to go off-route?
“For this, yes; but quickly!” The voice made his head pulse into a flare of pain so that he staggered, clutching at his temples. It settled back into the usual terrible ache but he had the permission he needed. He settled the knife in his hand, wiping the blade on his trousers, and hurried to the brothel.
Mickel watched the two soldiers disappear with the first consignment of parcels and boxes and a promise of more to be delivered to their quartermaster when he had set up his headquarters. The street was veiled with rain. He had heard Bet leave, and was not surprised to see that Vansel had gone, but there was no sign of Bet having returned either. Her cloak was not there, nor was the basket which was normally by the door. He looked out into the teeming rain again, worried. Where was she? If anything had happened to her he would never forgive himself. He could not go out to look for her either. If he left now, there would be no-one to unlock the door and let her in, and she did not have a key. He was stuck until either Vansel reappeared or Bet did. For now, he made his way back up the stairs to the little sitting room and sat in the window.
A sudden dash of lightning and roll of thunder sounded, almost above his head, it seemed, and the glare left a vivid blue slash across his vision. Where was she?
Back in the Mermaid, Jem hustled into the kitchen.
“All’s well,” Esme told him as she re-entered. “You?”
“Could be trouble. They’re taking the rooms for the officers.”
“I’ll empty Jack’s things out quick, but what shall we do with that lot?” She nodded towards the barn.
“Nothing yet.” Jem shrugged, helpless. “When we know what’s what we’ll leave sign for Vansel. For now, all we can do is hope that he stays out of the picture, that Alaric and the others can lie low and that Jack and the girls will be all right in the cellar until then.”
“Well, we have all the rooms to prepare in the meantime. We’d better get on with it.”
Jem nodded in gloomy agreement and went to fetch fresh linen as Esme dashed off to remove the incriminating apricot suit and other evidence from Jack’s room.
Blakey was sitting on the floor in the upstairs room when he heard the front door slam open. He raised his head. A slamming door in this town usually meant trouble and trouble meant Copeland. In his current mindset, he was itching to meet up with Copeland.
He tried the door, but it was shut. He twisted the handle again but it did not shift; the girls had locked it. In a temper, he set a shoulder to it and broke the door open. There was a sudden flare of pain in his old shoulder injury which he ignored. He went down the stairs two at a time, coming to Madam’s lounge just in time to see the door closing secretively and to hear the subtle click of the key in the lock. The carpet was smeared with mud and traces of blood, and Blakey realised that anyone else in that room was about to get the equivalent of the orange lantern.
The rain slashed down, and the wind howled. Mickel wandered fretfully through his warehouse. It was getting colder down here, but though upstairs the fire was banked and warm, he could not sit still. He was dreadfully worried about Bet. Where could she be? Vansel had gone so she must have managed to open the door round the back. There were advantages to being involved with smugglers, one being that any place where decent brandy was required had some obscure back way in – or in this case, out. But that still didn’t explain what had happened to Bet, and with the town full of soldiers...
There was a sound, and Mickel went to the door. “Vansel! Have you seen Bet?”
“She’s safe, unlike the rest of us.” Vansel slid the sodden coat off his shoulders and draped it over the back of a chair. “All clear here?”
“All clear. Come dry by the fire and tell me what on earth is going on.”
Mickel fetched his friend a towel. Vansel thanked him and began to dry off the worst of it. “It’s been a complex sort of morning. The Colonel’s arrived along with a couple of hundred soldiers. I’d guess there are more to come; Lowry was never one for half-measures. As for Bet, she’s hiding in the cellar at the Mermaid with two of her friends. They were chased there by a gang of soldiers.”
“Are they all right?” Mickel interjected sharply.
“Yes. Jack appeared on the scene just in time to make their acquaintance, announce his presence to the entire body of the army and get the girls involved, which is why they ended up hiding at the inn, whereupon a quartermaster turned up and took possession of the place. I got out just in time and went to leave sign for Alaric so that he doesn’t appear and deliver the Mother of the Shantar to her greatest enemy.”
“And?”
“I left sign at the oak tree. It’s a bit of a risk but I need to have him thinking of an alternative.” Vansel sighed. “Now the Colonel’s here we need to get out in a hurry. It was bad enough before but this is madness. The Susan is lurking out to sea a little way and if we can just get the Mother and Jack on board, we can hare off to Mardon and leave Lowry and his men to ferret around here. I just need to get Jack out of that benighted cellar before the inn fills up with officers or they’ll drink away all the barrels he needs to hide behind!” His face was suddenly lit by another crack of lightning outside. “I should go. The storm will keep people off the streets so it may be a good time to get Jack away.”
“Where will you take him?” Mickel took the empty mug from his friend.
“Straight across to Alaric if I can; then we can board the Susan and leave. Are you stopping here for the moment?”
“I can’t leave now, much as I would like to.” The merchant shook his head. “I know we’re here to be revenged on Copeland but it’s all got so complicated.”
Vansel shrugged. “Once upon a time the only thing I could think of was revenging my father’s death, but things are so much more threatening that I think you need to be here. Sooner or later people will turn on Copeland, and they will need some direction so that it doesn’t become civil war. You can help them, I know, and my father would say that that helping the living is far more important than avenging the dead. We are in the middle of changing times, Mickel, and all we can do is react as best we can.” He rose. “Talking of which, I’d best be off. If they can, I’ll have someone bring Bet back here. If not, Jem and Esme will take good care of her. You know how to get into the cellars, as I recall?”
Mickel smiled. “Of course.”
Vansel grimaced as he inched his way into the cold, sodden coat. “Take care, Mickel. I’ll be in touch when I can, but don’t worry if you don’t hear anything for a few weeks.”
“You always say that, and I always do. Go, boy! Take care of Jack and Alaric, look after the Mother, and try not get yourself into trouble with the Colonel sniffing about.” He shut the door behind Vansel and locked it carefully.
“Copeland is in the room? What is he doing?” Nereia gasped.
“He has a knife and intends to use it,” her blackwater twin replied.
“I don’t know how to get back there! You say you are here to protect me - do something!”
The implacable being stepped forward as if to embrace her. “I must take over your body. There is no other way.”
Nereia shuddered at the idea but there was no time to argue. “You will leave agai
n afterwards?”
“As you wish.”
Shrinkingly, she stepped into the chill embrace. It stung like fire as it touched her skin but she wasn’t about to allow herself to die at Copeland’s hands so she leant forward into it. There was a sudden feeling of dizziness and she opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor of Madam’s lounge with Copeland locking the door. She stood up deliberately.
“Nereia,” he greeted her.
She considered this for a moment. “After a fashion, yes.”
Outside the parlour door, knowing he had scant seconds to get in, Blakey threw himself at it again and again, his shoulder shrieking with pain, until the door hinges gave.
Lightning flashed white into the room and the rain thundered down. Blakey staggered in to see Copeland stab at Nereia. She blocked the blade with the flat of her hand. The blade impaled her palm and she pushed against it, sliding her hand along the blade until her fingers closed around the hilt, holding it, horribly pierced. Copeland grabbed at the knife but the streaming blood made it slippery and he could not grip it. With cold precision and a total lack of fear or pain, she drove the fingers of her free hand into his eye socket.
Copeland staggered, howling like an animal. Blakey dragged him out into the hall and threw him on the floor. Copeland scrabbled back down the hall, cringing from the towering bodyguard, and as he fumbled for the door handle, a bloody knife thudded into the doorframe beside him. Blakey whirled to find Nereia just lowering her bloodied hand from the throw.
Copeland ran, disappearing into the thunderous rain, and Blakey shut the door. He paused to wrench the blade out of the wood and turned back to Nereia. “Are you all right?”
Thunder reverberated out over the bay. Nereia took the knife from him and thoughtfully slid the blade through her pierced hand before withdrawing it again. There were exclamations from the girls who had clustered, watching over the banisters above; one retched.
Blakey ignored them. “Nereia, are you all right? Was Mary in there with you?”
“Mary?” She seemed to come back from a long way away.
“She wasn’t in there, was she?”
Now he was aware of the change to her own expressions and back again.
“Blakey.” Her voice had the slightest hint of an echo; it made his hackles rise. “You need to stay away from me right now. I can’t promise not to hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me-”
“I can,” she hissed, “though I’m trying not to hurt anyone. Stay outside the room till Madam gets back. If I come out, don’t let me hurt the girls. And-” She held up her hand and his skin prickled to see the wound join itself together again seamlessly. “Unless you can do this I suggest you get your shoulder seen to.”
Blakey became acutely aware of the pulsing agony in his shoulder, and he slumped against the wall. Nereia smiled slightly and went into the room, leaving Madam’s girls to help him. That black landscape shimmered in the mirror as she lay on the sofa and closed her eyes.
Once again there was that feeling of dislocation, and this time she fell forward to land on her knees in that off-white bone sand.
“What kind of protection was that supposed to have been?” she demanded. “What did you do to my hand?”
The implacable other gazed at her. “Your hand is whole again, as are the other hurts you have suffered.”
“You can do that?”
“Evidently.”
She regarded the other Nereia for a long moment. “You say that I need to fix this great wrong. How? Do I have to do that again?”
“We must combine.”
“No! You’re dangerous. You nearly killed Copeland.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “I only just diverted your aim, and the gods know how tempting it was to just let you get on with it.”
“He was a threat to be eliminated. Much good would have come of it.”
“Maybe so, but I am not a murderer! I can’t go killing people!”
“I can, should it prove necessary.”
The blandness of its statement made Nereia shudder. “I know you can. I could feel it. You can, but you must not.”
“That is highly illogical.” It frowned.
Perhaps there was only one way to make it realise how vital this was to her. Nereia gestured around her. “Fixing this place is important to you, isn’t it?”
It cocked its head on one side at this. “More important than anything in any of the worlds.”
“Not to me, it isn’t.” She was grimly determined. “Not as important as people. Not as important as the most insignificant beggar. And certainly not as important as Mary. You want me to sort all this out, and I’ll try – but on my terms.”
There was a silence. And then her blackwater twin spoke.
“State your terms.”
Nereia paced alongside the hissing black waves as they crashed and tumbled, and made her deal with the creature that wore her face.