Eternal (21 page)

“What?”

“The brand—the thing you touched me with to release me last night.”

I reached in my pocket for the little brooch. For some reason I felt reluctant to give it to her.

“Where did you get it from, Helen?”

A shadow seemed to fal over her face. “Miss Scratton gave it me, before she set off for St. Martin’s. She said she had found it in her study and that it must have been left there by my mother, and that she thought I should have it.”

“But why would your mother stil have it? Didn’t you see someone take it from you when you were a baby in the children’s home?”

“That was only a kind of dream. Maybe what I saw wasn’t true. Or maybe the home had just put it away safely and they gave it back to my mother when she came to col ect me al those years later. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.

I’ve got it back now.”

She took it from me and quickly pinned it to the slip under her school blouse.

“I don’t think you should do that, Helen,” I whispered. “It’s a sign of evil, isn’t it? If we can’t trust Miss Scratton, we should be very careful of anything she gave you. And it came from your mother in the first place. That’s al the more reason to fear it.”

“But I was only a baby! Don’t you think my mother could have given me just one good thing?” Helen’s voice shook.

“It released me from Miss Scratton’s hold, didn’t it?”

“So why would Miss Scratton give it to you, if you could use it against her?”

“I don’t know! Maybe she thought it was a worthless trinket. I don’t know and I don’t real y care. It’s a gift to me, from my mother, before she became what she is now. You can’t stop me having it, Sarah. I won’t let you!”

I had never seen her like this before, white and trembling and furious. I hated it when people like Celeste sneered at Helen and cal ed her crazy, but the uncomfortable thought came to me that perhaps she real y was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. But then again, anyone would seem crazy if they had gone through the stuff she’d had to deal with.

“It’s okay, Helen,” I said, aware that a few other students had turned to look at her. “It’s okay.”

I sat in silence, letting the moment pass. Then I busied myself with eating my breakfast, though I wasn’t hungry.

“I can’t stop you keeping the brooch,” I said quietly. “But please be careful, Helen. We don’t know what other powers it might have. I just want you to be safe.”

“I am safe,” Helen muttered. “But what about Evie?

Where can they have taken her? And Agnes just said that you had to seek? Nothing else?”

“No, just that.” I sighed. “Seek and ye shal find. I hope that’s true.”

I didn’t tel Helen that already, before breakfast, I had walked down to the pool, dreading and yet half expecting to see Evie’s body floating in it. But there had been no one there except the gardener, cutting the lawns and whistling softly to himself. And Josh had said that she wasn’t dead, despite the image of the drowned girl that Agnes had shown us. After going to the pool I had gone to the stables to see Josh, who was there already, working early. He told me that they had found no trace of Evie down by the river and that he was stil convinced she was alive. He was planning to search over the moors again as soon as he had tended to the horses in the stables and could get away. That much at least I could tel Helen.

“Let’s check out al the places on the school grounds that we know the coven has used before,” I said to Helen, pushing my plate away. “There’s the crypt under the ruins where we had our first battle with them. I’m going to cut classes and have a look down there for a start.”

“I’l come with you,” she replied quickly.

“No, it would attract too much attention if we are both missing from class. You cover for me, say I’m doing errands for one of the mistresses or something.”

The bel rang for the end of the meal. We stood for prayers and then fel into line as everyone filed out to get ready for the day’s work.

“I’m just going to check the mail,” Helen said, “to see if Tony—Dad—has written again.”

We walked down the corridor to the black-and-white entrance hal . Here, on a polished table, the students’ mail was set out each morning after breakfast. Helen found her letter. She opened it, and I could see the first few lines.

Dear Helen, Miss Hetherington called me to say you’d had an accident. I do hope you are feeling better. I’ve been worried. . . .

Helen stuffed it into her pocket, looking pleased. “I’l write back to him later. Look, isn’t that something for you?”

A smal parcel stood at the back of the table, labeled To Miss Sarah Venetia Rosamund Fitzalan, Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies. I recognized my mother’s flamboyant handwriting and remembered with surprise that I had written to her at the beginning of term asking about Maria. It already seemed such a long time ago. I picked up the parcel eagerly, though something warned me not to open it in front of any other students. The bel was already ringing for the first period of the day, and girls and mistresses were crossing the hal on their way to various classrooms. I caught sight of Agnes’s portrait hanging on the wal . She seemed to be watching me, encouraging me. She had shown me the image of Maria, and I was more certain than ever that there was some connection between Maria and everything else that had happened. Then I remembered that it was Miss Scratton who had moved the painting into the entrance hal so that it could be seen and admired—Miss Scratton who had gone back on everything she had promised us. My sense of certainty tumbled again, and I felt a swift pulse of panic run through me. How could I possibly find Maria? And how much more desperately did I want to find Evie? “Seek,”

Agnes had said, but it was like searching for a leaf in a great forest.

“Helen, when you get to class make some excuse about me. I’l see you later.” I ran up the white marble stairs with the parcel under my arm. As I reached the dormitory floor, I bumped into Velvet. She was wearing riding kit.

“Careful!” she snapped.

“Oh—sorry—”

“Just get out of my way!” She ran past me down the stairs, with a dangerous look in her eyes. An image came into my mind of black smoke licked by dul flames, and the sound of girls screaming and sobbing fil ed my ears. I felt sick, and seemed to gag on the bitter smel of charred wood and metal. The next moment the sights and sounds had gone and I was alone.

I wanted to run after Velvet and have things out with her, but I couldn’t let her distract me from what was real y important. I turned my back on her and walked down the deserted dormitory corridor. Everyone had gone to class, so there was no one to see me pass through the door in the curtained alcove. I began to climb the hidden stairs to the attic, switching on the flashlight that we kept on the first step. No one would find me here, or see the contents of my parcel. I would look at it quickly, then start my search of the places where the coven might have taken Evie.

Shutting the door of Agnes’s study behind me, I looked on the shelves where she had stored the ingredients for her healing spel s. I found a box of colored candles, and chose four tal white ones and set them on her desk. Four lights for four sisters, four elements, four corners of the Circle. As an afterthought, I put a bloodred candle in the center and lit that for Maria, then turned off the flashlight.

Then I sat down and unwrapped my mother’s parcel, pul ing away several layers of card and tissue paper until I found a dress made of soft scarlet material, embroidered al over with fruits and flowers.

“Oh, it’s lovely.” I sighed, gently stroking the fabric. Then I realized I had seen something similar before: the red silk ribbon that Cal’s mother had sent me. This was the same kind of needlework. The dress was Romany craft, I was sure of that. Forgetting everything else for a moment, I turned impatiently to my mother’s letter.

Darling Sarah, I do hope the term has started well for you. How is dear old Wyldcliffe looking in the spring sunshine? It was lovely to get your letter. I know you have always been fascinated by Maria and our Gypsy connections! You always used to ask me for stories about her when you were a child.

I am sending you this dress and I know I can trust you to look after it properly. It must be a hundred years old and belonged to Maria’s mother (your great-great grandmother—just think of that!). I think it might have been a wedding dress, though I’m not sure. And I think the leaves are a kind of headdress to go with it. Anyway, I was going to keep the dress as a surprise for your eighteenth birthday, my darling, but as you are going to have a school dance (goodness—we never had such a thing in my day!), I thought you might like to wear it then. I think it would look rather gorgeous on you, much better than a boring old prom dress. It has been passed down as a memento of a different life, and now it is yours.

I don’t know much more about Maria than I have already told you. Sadly, I never knew her as she died when I was only two or three. My own mother was always rather guarded about Maria, as though she didn’t quite like talking about her. But you know how straitlaced poor Granny was, like all the Talbot-Travers side of the family. All starchy and stiff and old-school manners. I wanted very much to be close to her, but it just wasn’t her style. At least I’ve been a different kind of mother to you, my sweet.

When Granny was so ill last year, her mind wandered a little and she sometimes talked about her own childhood, in a terribly rambling kind of way, but I did pick up a few things. Apparently Maria was very imaginative and got into trouble at Wyldcliffe for frightening the other girls with ghost stories about goblins that lived up in the caves on the hills. And I know that even though Maria married well (in terms of money and land and all the rest), she still kept in touch with the Gypsy people and did a lot for them. Apparently there was one particular friend she had called Zak. When I was little, I used to think that perhaps Maria and Zak had been secretly in love and I made up quite a romance about them, which made Granny dreadfully cross, as she thought this insulted her own father’s memory. But from what I remember I am sure your great-grandfather was very dull and stuffy compared to Maria’s Gypsy friend! Oh, and another thing, when Granny was reliving her memories in those last few days before she passed away, she went on about Maria and drums. It was quite odd. She kept saying something about “My mother told me to stay away from the drums.”

Granny was quite insistent and said it several times. “Stay away from the drums in the deep places of the earth.” Of course, she was very muddled and ill by then, poor love. Oh, it’s all rather sad, looking back on family history, isn’t it? When all the people who have been before us have to go down into the valley of death and leave this world behind—

But I’m getting too gloomy! I meant this to be a cheerful letter to go with your pretty dress. I do hope you get the chance to wear it. If it doesn’t fit, ask the school housekeeper to alter it for you. I’m sure she will help if you ask nicely.

Well, that’s nearly all for now, my darling. I hope you are enjoying plenty of rides on Starlight—and Daddy is dropping hints that if you get a good report he might keep one of the young hunters he is training up and give it to you next season. . . .

The rest of the letter was just gossip and affection and bits of news from home. I read the parts about Maria again.

Stay away from the drums.

It was al making a pattern, but not one that made any sense. Then my eye was caught by a sentence in the letter.

I think the leaves are a kind of headdress . . . I hadn’t seen any leaves. I felt inside the layers of wrapping again, and my hand touched something cold and hard under the tissue paper.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a delicate crown made of polished bronze leaves intertwined in an eternal circle. The dress was lovely, but this circlet was extraordinary; a miracle of craftsmanship that glowed a deep burnished color in the candlelight. It was hard to believe that it had started life in the earth, as a lump of lifeless metal ore.

My heart began to pound. I had already seen this bright circle crowning Maria’s dark head in my vision by the standing stones. Yet it was old, older than the dress that had belonged to Maria’s mother—hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old. Where had Maria found it? What did it mean? And why had it come to me?

There was a glass-fronted cabinet on one of the wal s, containing bottles of ointments and essences. I stood in front of it, just able to see a dim reflection of my face in the glass door. I watched myself, fascinated, as I raised the circlet in my hands and placed it on my head like a crown.

Everything changed. I saw with different eyes. I was no longer in the attic, but in a meadow fil ed with flowers. I wore a crown of ripe corn and scarlet poppies, and I was holding the hand of a young child, who looked up at me with trusting eyes. It was sunrise, and the whole day stretched out ahead of me in a long, golden vista. There was a clear pool at my feet, and I looked down and saw my reflection. I was beautiful—I was transformed. I lived now and in eternity; I was far beyond anything I had ever known, and the drums were beginning, driving into my heart and mind and taking me deeper into the magic. I was special, anointed, marked out for a great destiny—

“No, come back! Sarah, Sarah!” Someone was shaking me. “Sarah, wake up!”

It was Cal. He tore the circlet from my head, and I fel to the ground. Every trace of the glory had vanished. I was just Sarah again. The moment of vision was over. I burst into tears and sobbed in the dust. Cal knelt beside me, ful of concern, but I was too angry to care. “Why did you do that?” I snatched the crown back. “It’s mine, give it to me!”

He looked surprised, but then drew away from me and stood up. “Here, take it,” he said abruptly. “But what the hel was it doing to you?”

I got up and forced myself to stop crying, and checked the circlet anxiously to make sure it wasn’t damaged. “It wasn’t doing anything, it was just—you don’t understand.”

“Then explain. Tel me what’s going on. What was happening here, Sarah?” Cal asked. His face in the shadows looked lean and tired. “You were in some kind of weird trance.”