Eternal (19 page)

I went straight to the High Mistress’s study and knocked loudly, hoping that someone I could even half believe in, like Miss Hetherington or Miss Clarke, would be there. But there was no answer. I tried the handle, and the door was locked. Undeterred, I strode away and headed up the marble stairs to the mistresses’ common room on the second floor. Classes had finished for the day and girls were pouring down the staircase, going to music and art clubs or on their way to the library to do prep. It was as though they al lived on the other side of a glass wal to me.

My Wyldcliffe wasn’t the same as theirs. Only Velvet and Sophie and Laura had unwittingly brushed against my world, and as I threaded through the chattering students, I wondered how long it would be before al the Wyldcliffe girls came under the shadow of the Priestess. Why would she stop at hurting the three of us? Why not destroy al that was young and good and hopeful?

I reached the door of the staff common room and was just about to knock when it opened. To my relief it was Miss Hetherington.

“Oh, please, Miss Hetherington, I wanted to see you about Evie.”

“So you’ve heard already, have you?”

“Heard?”

“I’m afraid Evie’s father has been taken il whilst he was on leave in London. She’s had to catch a train to go and see him straightaway. It’s a long journey, but she’l get there later tonight, and I’m sure it wil be a comfort to them both to be together.”

“She’s gone to London?” Miss Hetherington looked so sincere, but was she bluffing? “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Miss Dalrymple took the cal from London and arranged everything for Evie.”

I bet she did, I thought grimly. So that was the way the coven was playing this. Miss Dalrymple and the rest of them must be obeying the Priestess’s orders. They had obviously planted this story about Evie having to dash to London to cover up her absence.

“Are you al right, Sarah? You look rather pale.”

“No, I’m fine,” I answered. Miss Hetherington might simply be an innocent messenger, but she might equal y be one of them. There was only one teacher in this place that I could real y trust, and that was Miss Scratton. She was the person I needed right now. Trying to make a connection with Maria, as Evie and I had planned, would have to wait. But our High Mistress was stil in the hospital at Wyldford Cross. I backed away from the door of the staff room, trying to look unconcerned.

“Oh wel , I guess Evie wil be back soon enough,” I said.

“Thank you. I’d better go and do my prep.”

I headed down the marble staircase and walked to the library, but I didn’t go in. I carried on walking until I reached the windowless red corridor. Its crimson wal s looked almost black in the lamplight. I opened the door of our common room. Thankful y no one was there, so I went straight over to the corner where a new telephone had been instal ed. You were supposed to write your name in a book with the date and length of your cal , but I didn’t bother. I flipped through the telephone directory until I found the number of the hospital.

“Hel o? Hel o? Can I please speak to Miss Scratton?” I asked the receptionist, speaking as quietly as I could.

“Miss who?” said the woman at the other end.

“Scratton,” I repeated. “She was admitted on Sunday afternoon. She’s one of the teachers at Wyldcliffe Abbey.”

“Do you know which ward she is in, dear?”

“No, I’m sorry—but she had head injuries. She’d been in a road accident. Is she okay? Is it possible to speak to her?”

“What did you say her first name was?”

“I didn’t—I don’t know—”

“Wel , I can’t seem to find her on the patient list.”

“But you must!” I begged. “It’s real y urgent.”

“Just wait a moment, I’l go and inquire. I’m putting you on hold.”

Her voice snapped off, and some irritating music played in my ear. I waited nervously, expecting Miss Dalrymple to come in and snatch the phone from me at any moment, and I cursed Wyldcliffe’s long-held rule forbidding cel phones.

“Come on, come on,” I groaned under my breath; then the music stopped and the woman spoke again.

“Are you stil there, dear? I’ve just spoken to the manager, and he’s confirmed that we don’t have a patient cal ed Miss Scratton.”

“You mean she’s been discharged?” I said hopeful y.

“No, dear. She couldn’t have been discharged, as she was never here.”

“Never there?”

“That’s what I said. Sorry to disappoint you. Good night.”

The phone went dead.

For a moment I stood there, blinking stupidly at the phone. Then I slammed it down and ran out, my mind buzzing with questions. Where was Miss Scratton? What did it mean, she had never been in the hospital? She must have been there after the road accident. But if she wasn’t in the hospital, why hadn’t she come back to Wyldcliffe to help us? I had to find some answers somewhere.

I raced down the corridor, opening classroom doors, looking for someone, anyone, but the school seemed deserted. One of the doors I opened was to a smal music room. Mr. Brooke was giving a piano lesson to a golden-haired eleven-year-old with an earnest expression and heavy glasses. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I turned and fled until I reached the library, then tried to smooth my uniform and pul myself together before going in. A group of eighteen-year-olds was sitting at a table, deep in study.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but can I just ask you something?”

One of the girls looked up, mildly surprised. It was one of Wyldcliffe’s traditions that you didn’t speak to older girls unless spoken to, but I knew Catherine Hedley slightly from home, as we had both ridden in the same summer polo matches. “Catherine, you went to over St. Martin’s with Miss Scratton, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did, worse luck.” She waved her wrist at me. It was bandaged heavily. “I can’t ride for at least two weeks after the crash. But I’m lucky it was nothing more serious, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”

“Um . . . it’s just that Miss Scratton was our form teacher, and some of us were wondering about . . . um . . .

clubbing together to get her some flowers. Do you know what ward she was in? Did you see her being taken to the hospital? How was she? Was she very badly hurt?”

“I don’t real y know,” said Catherine. “I can’t remember much about what happened. We’d had a great time at St.

Martin’s, and when we were driving back everything seemed fine. Then I remember seeing a huge deer leap out in front of the minibus. The next thing I knew I was waking up with a pain in my wrist and the minibus wrapped round a tree.”

“So where was Miss Scratton?”

“Miss Dalrymple said she’d already been taken to the hospital. Miss Scratton had been sitting at the front and was hurt worse than the rest of us. It’s a nice idea to send flowers. I’m sure she’l be better soon, though.”

“Miss Dalrymple was there?” I asked.

“Yes, she organized getting us al back to school.”

“Oh, yeah—of course. Wel , thanks.”

I turned away and left them to their books. It seemed that Miss Dalrymple had a finger in every pie.

There were two possibilities. Either Miss Scratton, like Evie, had been spirited away by the Priestess and her fol owers against her wil , or she was in league with Celia Hartle and had abandoned us just when we needed help.

The second suggestion was impossible. I believed in Miss Scratton. I always would. Besides, Miss Scratton had known something like this would happen to her and had tried to warn us about it. “I wil not be al owed to stay long,”

she had said. And so she had tried to protect us with the spel we had made in the ruins, not foreseeing that Velvet’s blundering would undo it. Miss Scratton had done everything she could, but now she was gone. There was no wise guardian to help me. But I wasn’t the only one left.

How could I have forgotten that I had one remaining sister who might be able to tel me what to do? I had Agnes, and I stil had the Talisman. Somehow, I had to use it to reach her.

That night I crept out of the school one more time, tracing Evie’s footsteps down the secret steps to the old servants’ quarters and out to the stables. I was shivering under my jacket, and I told myself it was simply because I was cold. I was doing this for Evie, and for Helen, and I couldn’t be afraid. When I had gone back to the infirmary before the lights-out bel , the nurse had told me that Helen had improved slightly and had just fal en asleep. “I’m not going to let you disturb her now,” she had said with a smile. “She’l be right as rain in the morning.”

I clung to that hope, and a hundred others. That Agnes would respond to my cal . That I would find Evie. That no harm would come to me alone at night, with the Priestess roaming the land. Besides, I had the Talisman with me. I told myself again and again that it would protect me from the Priestess, but as I crept down the tree-lined drive to the school gates, I couldn’t help feeling naked under the stars, as though Mrs. Hartle’s spirit was watching my movements like a spider waiting for its prey.

When I reached the locked gates, two figures were waiting for me in the shadows of the lane.

“Cal?”

He threw a rope over the wal . I scrambled up and dropped down lightly to the other side, where he and Josh were waiting for me. Cal hugged me briefly and Josh nodded, grim-faced, his golden smile wiped away by the terrible loss of Evie.

“We’l find her, Josh, I promise,” I said, moved by his pain. I had been worrying about Evie as my friend, my sister, my responsibility; for an instant I saw through his eyes, and felt his anguish. He had loved Evie al this time, and yet they hadn’t even kissed; he had her friendship and gratitude, but nothing more. And now he might never see her again.

“We’ve got to find her,” he replied, in a strained, broken voice. “We’ve just got to.”

The three of us set off in the direction of the vil age.

There was a thin frost underfoot; one of those sudden returns to winter that often happened in Wyldcliffe’s northern val ey.

The church tower looked pale and ghostly against the sky. Ancient black yew trees stood at the entrance to the graveyard like sentinels. Cal took my hand. “The spirits of the dead lie here,” he murmured. “Tread careful y.”

“We aren’t doing anything wrong,” I replied. “We seek Agnes in the light where she lives in peace, not in the shadows.”

He didn’t reply but held my hand more tightly.

I led the way to the old-fashioned stone tomb, surmounted by the angel statue. We gathered around it in silence. The statue looked down on us with worn stone eyes.

When I had tried to cal on Agnes once before, after my quarrel with Evie, nothing had happened. Agnes hadn’t responded to me. But here at her tomb, this place of power and protection, some special gift might be granted by my sister of fire. I set a circle of white candles around her grave, their little flames flickering bravely in the night air. Then I sprinkled herbs and flower petals and anointed the place with water sweetened with subtle oils. The boys shifted behind me uneasily, looking around for any sign of danger.

“Great Creator,” I said. “I stand here, innocent of any crime. I pray for my sisters Helen and Evie and our Guardian, Miss Scratton. They have fal en victim to our enemies. Let me speak with our sister Agnes for guidance.”

I took the Talisman from my pocket and hooked it over the outstretched hand of the stone angel. “Agnes, receive your own. Speak to me.”

Nothing happened. My stomach began to tighten.

Would she answer? The wind was getting stronger, sobbing through the branches of the trees. The hil s around us seemed cold and menacing, and I thought how frail my faith was in the face of such a bleak, hostile world. But it was a thread of gold, made not just for this moment, but for eternity. Although I was afraid, I somehow knew that we were al being cared for by a higher power, and that the whole of Creation was fundamental y good, not twisted and crazed like the Priestess and her Unconquered lords had made it for themselves. “I believe in you, Agnes,” I whispered. “I believe in your message of love.” I heard my heart pounding, and I seemed to hear Cal’s heart pulsing in time with my own, a steady beat of youth and strength that would never give up. “Please, Agnes, please help me now.”

The statue of the angel began to shine with a faint light.

We saw it shimmer and change until Agnes was standing in its place. Josh gasped and knelt on the ground, shielding his eyes as the light grew stronger.

Agnes did not speak, but gestured with her right hand.

The light spil ed from her hand in white flames, and in the center of the flames we could see vivid images. The first was of Evie, just as I had seen her before, stil and silent under the water, her hair floating around her face and her eyes glazed in death. I cried out and the image changed.

Now I saw Helen in bed in the infirmary. She was dreadful y il and thin and struggling for every breath.

“They told me she was better—but she’s dying!” I gasped. “And Evie is—oh, Evie—”

Agnes laid her finger on her lips for silence and then gestured again. The flames glowed once more, and this time I saw a young girl with dark, curly hair. It was Maria, I was sure of it. She was lying with her eyes closed at the foot of the tal est standing stone, wearing a circlet of leaves like a crown. Then Agnes looked right into my eyes and pointed at me. A single word formed on her lips:

“Seek.” Her voice echoed through the graveyard.

“Seek . . . seek . . . seek . . .” The next moment I was staring at the stone face of the angel, blank and meaningless.

I turned to Cal in a panic. “What shal I do? Evie—where is she? What’s happened to her? And Helen looks so il !”

“Was that other girl Maria?” asked Cal.

“Yes, I’m sure it was her. That’s exactly how I saw her up by the standing stones. But what did Agnes mean? Seek

—which one of my friends must I seek first?”

I felt pul ed in every direction. Josh spoke unsteadily. “I’d tear Wyldcliffe to pieces to find Evie, but we stil have no idea where to start. And Maria—wasn’t that just an image of the past? At least we know where Helen is. Perhaps you should start by helping her.”