Ambergate (4 page)

Later I crept up the stairs to my chamber and sat on the bed in the darkness, without undressing. I knew Aggie would come
eventually. By now she would know why the soldiers had come.

It seemed a long time before the soft knock came on my door. There was a whisper of silk over the floorboards, and shadows
jumped on the walls. She set down the candlestick on the chest and sat on the bed next to me, shivering, pulling her shawl
close around her. Her voice was low and urgent.

“Scuff, you’re right. They are looking for you. Mather told me as much tonight after supper. He said it casually enough—was
sorry to trouble me, but he knew a girl from a certain Home in the Capital had worked here, was still here, according to the
village records. He’s been sent to find you.”

A chill of terror ran over me. “What did you say?”

“I said we’d had many kitchen maids at Murkmere in the old days of the Master, but that the Lord Protector had since taken
away all but our most loyal servants, and the tenant farmers and shepherds. It wasn’t exactly a lie, was it?”

We looked at each other. She was biting her lip. “But why—why are they looking for you? What have you done? There must be
some mistake. I know it can’t be so very bad. I know you, Scuff.”

“But you don’t,” I said, desperate. “You don’t know me at all.” I shuddered as I thought again of my dark life in the Capital—the
cellar, the Orphans’ Home, the ravens, the blood. I’d told Aggie so little. “It was wicked what I did. They track down and
punish criminals however young they be. In the end, all criminals must face the justice of the Ministration.”

“They dispense no justice! You’ve told me yourself about those dreadful prison ships and the houses of correction!”

“And I will face worse than that,” I whispered, twisting my icy hands together. “I will face the death penalty, certain sure.”

She looked shaken. “I wish you’d tell me what you did.”

I fingered the red thread amulet around my neck. “It’s best you don’t know. Then if they question you, you won’t have to lie.”

“I suppose I must believe you,” she said uncertainly. “Mather has shown me a search warrant signed by the Lord Protector himself.
He says that because of the recent unrest and rebellion in the country, the Ministration is tracking down all criminal elements
for public punishment. You—a criminal element! How can I believe it?”

“It’s the truth.”

She thumped the mattress. “I wish Aunt Jennet wasn’t sick! She’d send these men packing without more ado.”

“You mustn’t tell her!” I cried out, and Aggie put her hand across my mouth.

“Mather has asked me to give him a list of all those who work here. I’ll have to give it to him tomorrow. I won’t include
you, but they may well search the estate. You should hide until they go.”

I shook my head. “They’ll find me. I must leave tonight.” I thought of the vast dark space beyond the gates and shivered:
I had never got over my fear of open places.

She read my mind. “You can’t venture into the Wasteland, it’s too dangerous. No, you must stay here.”

“But where can I hide where I won’t be found?”

She gave me a quick hug. “I’ll protect you, don’t fear. I always have, haven’t I?”

I gazed at her hopelessly. This was not Mistress Crumplin’s bullying or Miss Leah’s frightening tempers; nor was I any longer
a small girl who could be sheltered from mistreatment by an older, more confident ally. In my spirit, I’d already surrendered
to the soldiers; I knew there was no escape from my fate. It would be a just punishment: I deserved it. If I did not suffer
it now, I would surely suffer it in the hereafter. I’d prayed often enough for forgiveness from the Almighty, but clearly
He had not granted it to me.

But Aggie was more robust than I. “I do know somewhere you could hide,” she said suddenly. “But you must be brave enough to
stay there all alone until the soldiers go.” She looked at me so anxiously that more to pacify her than anything else, I nodded.

“Quickly, then!” She jumped up from the bed, and lit my candle with hers. “Put on warm clothes. I must too. It will be cold.
I’ll return in a moment.”

Then she was gone. I began to move about in a trance, collecting clothes from the closet: my cloak, a lined bonnet, boots.
When Aggie came back, she carried an unlit lantern in one hand; in the other was a basket in which lay a clay bottle of water,
a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, and spare candles. “Hurry!” she hissed, giving me the basket. “The soldiers are dead to
the world. Let’s go before they wake.”

I blew out my candle and followed her trustingly through the silent house. We knew our way so well down the back stairs to
the kitchen quarters, it only needed the occasional fingertip touch to guide us in the darkness.

In the kitchen Aggie lit the lantern from the dying embers of the fire, then she led the way to the door that opened into
the vegetable garden. I was too agitated to think clearly, but Aggie was calm. She’d realized that if we went out through
the stable yard, the soldiers’ horses, restless in their strange quarters, might whinny and give us away.

I do not like night in the countryside. It is a wild time, a time for animals and birds—those that wake then—to hunt and kill.
Only in the city is night for the people, and then, only the very worst of humankind, those that are animals in everything
but name. I came to life as we went out through that door into colder, damper air, and I clutched Aggie. “Do we have to go
outside?”

“There is no other way,” she whispered, and she took my arm. I could feel her trembling.
She is as scared as I am
, I thought.

“But the Birds of Night…?” Even as I spoke, I heard an owl hoot far away.

“They’ll not harm us. I’ve walked the night before. Try to think only of good things, Scuff. It will keep evil at bay.”

She has a stronger amulet than I have. It is made of amber and has more power to protect
. But when the owl’s hoot came again, closer, it sounded not threatening to me, but mournful, the crying of a soul lost in
darkness.

The cloud was thick above us, hiding the moon and stars. The black bushes seemed to press closer, always just beyond the lantern
light. Then, clinging together, we were beyond the overgrown garden, out into open space where there seemed to be more light,
as if the earth had stored it up during the day and still held it.

All this time I hadn’t asked where we were going. But now I knew.

The old square watchtower stood at the top of a rise, amongst a knot of black trees. I’d never dared enter it, for I’d always
heard such stories of horror from the servants. It was a damned place: it still held the Master’s ancient books that should
have been destroyed for the blasphemies they contained. Miss Jennet had wanted to use them to teach me to read, but I’d been
too frightened: I couldn’t add more sins to my great one. So I’d pleaded with Miss Jennet, and she had sighed and given me
Aggie’s old state-approved readers instead. I knew that Aggie, like Miss Jennet, had turned away from orthodox religion, but
she always let me take Devotion with the estate tenants.

In the old days the servants had whispered another story too: of a worse blasphemy committed by the Master. He had
had a flying machine built, which still lay in one of the top rooms.

I hung back, forcing Aggie to stop. “I can’t hide there!”

“You must! They’d never think a servant girl would dare go in. Mather is well aware of its reputation locally. They’ve told
me they plan to search the house tomorrow, and the cottages.”

“But I’ll be alone!”

“You want to die?” She grabbed my cloak, and half crying with fear, I let myself be dragged up a boggy path to the edge of
the copse.

Beyond the trees the tower loomed darkly. The Master had needed an elevator to take him to the top and the old winches still
stood at the bottom of one of the square walls. A cold wind tore at the chains that ran up to the black windows, scraping
them against the brickwork and making them jangle and groan like live things. Once, when I’d first arrived and knew little
of the blasphemy the tower contained, I’d escaped from the kitchen to admire the Master’s elevator system. Now I thought it
held his spirit in its tortured movements, and I shuddered.

Aggie led me around one side of the tower to a wooden door. She took a brass key from the pocket in her cloak and fitted it
into the keyhole. The door scraped open and she pulled me after her into an empty, windowless place. The air smelled of stone
and wood and age.

“You needn’t go up,” said Aggie, her voice suddenly too loud. She held her lantern out to show me a flight of wooden
stairs that led from one corner to a denser darkness above us. “You’ll be safe enough down here.”

I looked around at the leaping shadows, my heart sinking, while she set down the lantern and the basket. “I’ll come back for
you when the soldiers have gone.” She bent and lit a candle at the lantern, and the flame showed her anxious face. “I’ll lock
you in, Scuff, and keep the key next to my heart. They’ll have to break the door down to get in.”

I swallowed hard. There was nothing I could say. She was risking so much for my sake. Already she was at the door, slipping
through the gap to brave the night with her single candle. I heard the wood protest as the door scraped shut, and then the
click of the key turning. I stood alone in darkness, my feet in a pool of lantern light.

The air of the tower was thick and warm around me; the darkness pressed on my eyeballs. I could hear nothing from outside,
none of the sounds of night. For a moment I was too terrified to move, thinking of the cellar with the dead body beside me.
Then I picked the lantern up. The shadows fell away and there were no bodies.

I wanted to creep into a hole to hide, as I had done all my life. At last I crawled into the dusty space under the stairs,
pulling the basket after me.

Chance had woken early, with tears on his face.

He was lying on a pallet in an unfamiliar passage. Mildewed
wallpaper on the walls, faded rugs on floorboards; beyond him, a landing with closed shutters.

The door to Mather’s bedchamber was still closed, and a draft blew damply beneath it. When Chance tried to bury his cold face
in the blanket he’d been given the night before, the wool had the same bitter, salty smell.

When he unfastened the shutters, he saw that yesterday’s wind from the sea had brought a mist with it overnight. This morning
the mist had settled over the parkland, blurring the outlines of the massive oak trees just coming into leaf and turning the
new green world back to gray.
But even in the mist that girl won’t escape us
, he thought.
Mather won’t let her go as I did
.

It took most of the day for the three of them to search the house and the cottages of the frightened farmers: a cold day,
with the mist playing strange tricks on them, furring up their eyeballs so they couldn’t see, and muffling sounds, indoors
and out, so it seemed.

Mather checked the list in his hands for the umpteenth time. Miss Cotter’s handwriting was legible and bold. Mather had checked
everyone on it in his usual thorough way, questioned each person himself, forced the women to show him that they had no branding
scar. The estate workers knew nothing of an orphan girl. The household—if you could call it that—of the Hall itself appeared
to consist of Miss Cotter, the young maid Doggett, and two older footmen, apart from the aunt and the absent steward. And
surely Miss Cotter could not be dissembling. Why should she risk all she had for the sake of a criminal?

“This girl must have left Murkmere,” said Miss Cotter, shaking her head.

Mather was used to interrogating; he reveled in it, the thrill of the chase. In the end he always broke the protesting men
and women who claimed innocence. He was too clever for them. But now Miss Cotter held his gaze and her eyes were clear. He
could not detect a lie within them.

“What is the girl supposed to have done?” said Miss Cotter.

Mather did not like being questioned; he frowned. “That is highly confidential, I’m afraid.”

“You may have to extend your search to the Wasteland, Sir. It swallows many a criminal.”

They were standing in the stable yard. It was afternoon and the mist was beginning to lift, but the clouds were thick overhead
and the light gloomy.

“We must leave before the daylight goes,” said Mather. He was weary of investigating damp little hovels. The prospect of hunting
through the Wasteland, or the squalid little village where he had interrogated the Lawman, was tedious in the extreme.

He beckoned to the two young men. “Saddle your horses.” Then he clicked his heels and bowed abruptly to Miss Cotter. “My congratulations,”
he said dryly. “You seem to run your household with remarkably few staff.”

The girl didn’t blink. “We all help each other. It’s not I but my aunt who runs the house, in truth.”

“Then I hope your aunt recovers soon.”

“Thank you, Sir, she is much better. Indeed, she is rising for dinner, I believe.”

Mather had heard of the fearsome reputation of the aunt, who at one time had been Chief Elder in the village. It would be
the last straw to encounter her at the end of this unsuccessful day. He didn’t like women at the best of times. “I’m glad,”
he said stiffly, and made for his own horse with haste.

But he’d return, he thought. He’d return with extra men before the steward was back. He’d take them by surprise, at night.
Then he’d know for sure whether the girl, Number 102, was still there.

I don’t know who she was: the woman with me in the cellar, who died
.

I don’t believe she was my mother. But it was she who had brought me there, stayed with me in the dark and damp. She fed me
and clothed me and wrapped me in blankets, yet I sensed I was a burden to her. Sometimes she took me up into the street in
my little hooded cloak, and I would blink at the daylight, at the throngs of people, the tumult. She never let me venture
forth by myself: it was too dangerous, she said. In the streets of the Capital there were statues with eyes that would see
me; birds that would carry off the tasty morsel of a tiny child; soldiers who would shoot a stray little girl. So I stayed
hidden in the cellar until one morning when I awoke and she didn’t, and I knew she must be dead.