Hawthorn (13 page)

I LET DAISY
and Helen shepherd me through the crowds on the pier, into a coach where Mr. Bellows, Sam, and Agnes waited, and then out again through the crowds at the train station. I still felt unsteady on my feet (“Takes a bit to get your land legs!” Mr. Bellows said, slapping me on the back) and
blurry
, as if the fog in my vision had gotten inside my head. My ears were stopped up, too, as if I'd been swimming and had gotten water in them.
As if I'd drowned like the passengers on the
Lusitania
.

I shook my head to clear the voice out of my head.

“Stop doing that!” Helen hissed. “People are staring at you.”

I looked around the enormous station to see if Helen was right, but the faces of the people rushing past us to catch their trains were a blur. Helen kept a grip on my arm as we were swept into the crowds. I spotted Agnes's bright yellow feather in the crowd ahead of us. She waved at us and shouted that she'd go ahead and save us seats. When we boarded the train we found Daisy in a compartment arguing with a portly gentleman who wanted to take our seats.

“I simply must sit with my sister and her companion,” Daisy explained, looking into the man's small, fat-creased eyes. “We're taking her to the asylum and she's most unpredictable.”

The stout man lurched away, mumbling something in a thick accent, his eyes clouded over.

“Daisy, did you mesmerize that man?” Helen asked.

“Did you just tell him I was crazy?” I demanded.

“He was being so difficult!” Daisy cried, stamping her foot. “Here, Rupert will want to face forward—he gets motion sickness otherwise—and by the window. Agnes and Sam will sit in the middle. Ava, do you want the other window seat? You're looking rather green. Perhaps the air will do you good.”

“I'll be fine,” I said, sinking into the seat nearest the door to the corridor and next to Sam, who was reading a Liverpool newspaper. I glanced at the front page and saw an illustration of a scary-looking man with bat-like wings leaping from the roof of a building onto a terrified-looking girl.

“What is that?” I asked, shuddering at the image.

“There's been a sighting of Spring-heeled Jack in Liverpool,” Sam said with the gleeful smile of a boy. “I used to read about him in the penny dreadfuls.”

“Me too!” Agnes said, leaning across the compartment to peer at the story. “He used to give me nightmares. He had claws of steel and red glowing eyes, and spit blue and white flames into his victims' eyes. He snatched girls from their beds. Of course he's just a legend.”

“Are we quite sure of that?” Mr. Bellows asked, taking the paper from Sam. “Many of the legendary figures that spring up in crowded cities turn out to be creatures from Faerie.”

“That doesn't look like a creature from Faerie,” Daisy, who'd taken the window seat across from Mr. Bellows, objected.

“No, it looks like a shadow-ridden man,” Agnes said. “But I agree with Rupert. These city myths—
urban legends,
I suppose you could call them—deserve a deeper study. Take the Hammersmith Ghost . . .”

As they argued back and forth over the provenance of creatures like Spring-heeled Jack, the Hammersmith Ghost, and something called the Hedley Kow, I closed my eyes. Helen put a traveling rug over my lap. Soon the rocking of the train lulled me into a fitful slumber plagued by dreams of sinking ships, fat oozing rats, and bat-winged men with red eyes and metal claws. When I opened my eyes I saw snatches of the sodden countryside flashing by the rain-streaked windows. I turned away from the windows to look toward the compartment door. Those windows were covered with frosted glass so that the figures that passed in the corridor were indistinct and shadowy—

Shadow creatures
, I thought with a start,
tenebrae.
Had we been followed? Were we leading van Drood to Hawthorn Hall? Or was he already waiting for us there with Nathan?

I thought I should ask Mr. Bellows or Agnes to go out into the corridor to check—but before I could I was lulled once again into an uneasy slumber. When I woke next the compartment was dark. Daisy was asleep with her head on Agnes's shoulder. Mr. Bellows was leaning against the darkened windowpane, his head nodding on his chest, a boyish lock of hair falling over his forehead. Helen was right, I thought, he was really very young. Too young to lead soldiers into battle—too young to die in war.

I looked from him to Sam, who had fallen asleep with the newspaper over his face. The flickering lights from the corridor flashed over the garish illustration of Spring-heeled Jack,
making it look as if he were moving with the jerky motions of the moving pictures I'd watched in the nickelodeon. That's where I had seen Spring-heeled Jack before. He was one of the mustachioed villains of the penny melodramas I had watched back before I knew there were worse terrors in the world. But surely he was only what Agnes had called him—an
urban legend
.

I closed my eyes and started to fall asleep again but a scratching sound startled me awake. I opened my eyes. The sound was coming from outside the window. A branch must have brushed across it, only I didn't see any trees outside . . .

There it was again, a dreadful
scritch scritch scritch
like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. And were those scratches I saw on the glass? I stood up, stepping over Sam's and Agnes's feet, and leaned across the sleeping Daisy to look more closely. No, it couldn't have been a tree that made the sound. We were traveling across a desolate moor lit fitfully by a cloud-cloaked moon. But there was a scratch on the pane above Daisy— a long jagged line extending from the upper right-hand corner down to the lower left.

A dark shape fell over the glass—a shape like a bat hanging upside down—

With burning red eyes.

I started back, screaming, and fell over Agnes's feet. The malevolent red-eyed creature grinned at me. Then it held up a metal claw and scratched a long gash into the windowpane, drawing an
X
across the first scratch. The glass shattered, spraying shards over Daisy. Mr. Bellows started awake, as did Sam and Agnes and Daisy, who stared up at the creature in horror. Daisy opened her mouth to scream, but before she could
the creature reached in, grabbed her, and pulled her out of the compartment.

I screamed Daisy's name and lunged for her. I caught one of her feet—Mr. Bellows caught the other—but she had loosened the laces of her boots for the trip and they slipped off her stocking feet. I fell back holding a boot, but Mr. Bellows was quicker. He stuck his head out the window, turned around, and vanished upward. I heard Helen scream.

“They're on the roof!” Sam cried. “Come on—there are ladders at the end of each car. Agnes, go to the front of this car, I'll go to the back. We'll surround the devil.”

“I'll go with Agnes!” I cried.

“And I'll go with Sam,” Helen said, following me out into the corridor.

I turned to her. “If you're knocked off the roof you'll be killed, but I can fly. You should stay here.”

Helen looked like she was about to argue, but when I opened the door between cars and she saw the spindly ladder and the tracks flashing beneath the gap between cars, she turned white.

“P'raps you're right, but Ava”—she squeezed my arm—“get Daze back. I'll never forgive myself if you don't.”

I wondered what Helen had to forgive herself for as I climbed the ladder, but that thought was driven out of my head when I got to the roof of the car. The bat-winged man with the fierce red eyes held Daisy in the center of the roof, his long razor-tipped claw poised at her throat. Mr. Bellows and Sam stood at the rear end of the car with daggers brandished. Agnes held her dagger in her hand. I withdrew my dagger and unfurled my wings in an angry snap.

“Unhand her, you fiend!” Mr. Bellows roared.

“If you come any closer I'll slit her pretty little throat.” He spoke in a high, mincing falsetto that would have been funny if it weren't so . . .
horrible
.

“You're surrounded, Jack,” Mr. Bellows said in a low growl I barely recognized.

The red eyes swiveled around the roof of the speeding train car. “Two blokes what look like clerks and two Alices—by the time you make your first move the girl and me will be sitting down to tea with the queen at Buckingham Palace.”

“What do you want with her?” Mr. Bellows demanded. “She's just a girl.”

Spring-heeled Jack regarded Daisy with mock surprise as if he'd picked up the wrong brand of biscuit at the grocer's. “Say, you're right, she
is
a girl. A pretty one at that.” He stroked her face with a pointed claw that drew blood. Mr. Bellows swore and lunged forward but Sam held him back. “Don't worry, mate. That's not what I want her for. There's a bloke willing to pay good money for this girlie.”

“Van Drood,” Agnes whispered.

“Aye, that's his name.”

“We'll give you twice what he offered,” Sam said.

Jack laughed, an abrasive cackle that made me feel like a cheese grater was rubbing against my bare skin. “He's not a bloke I'd like to cross, mate.” The red eyes seemed to burn hotter and I realized he was afraid. This
monster
was afraid of van Drood. And van Drood wanted Daisy, which meant Jack wasn't going to make good on his threat to kill her.

Before I could give myself time to think about it, I flexed my
wings and flew at him, but he sprang off the car, carrying Daisy, and landed on the next car. I flew after him, sure that I could fly faster than he could jump, but it was as if his feet were made of India rubber. Each time he touched down on the train roof he sprang up again like a jack-in-the-box. And we were running out of train. If he sprang to the ground with Daisy she might get hurt. He was on the last car and not letting up. As he got to the edge of the last car he looked over his shoulder and cackled his grating laugh—and then pushed Daisy over the edge.

I screamed and dove for her, but she was snatched up before I could catch her. Thinking it was another of van Drood's henchmen I hurtled straight for the creature—and ran right into Marlin. We all tumbled to earth, rolling over and over the prickly ground. We came to a stop in a field of heather. A winged shape landed next to me and peered into my face.

“Are you all right?” Raven demanded.

“I'm fine,” I said, patting my skirt to pull it down over my knees. Daisy was struggling to her feet.

“I'm going after him,” Raven said to Marlin. “You get the girls back to the train.”

“I can get us back on the train myself,” I said, ruffling my wings to make sure I hadn't broken any feathers in the fall. A few floated loose but otherwise my wings felt sound.

“Good,” Raven said. “Then take Daisy. Marlin and I will give chase to that demon.”

But Marlin insisted on seeing us back to the train, which was lucky since I had lost so many feathers I couldn't fly properly at all. If the train hadn't stopped at a station we might never have caught up to it. Sam and Agnes were standing on the
platform. Mr. Bellows was pacing up and down. “Thank the Bells!” he swore when he saw us. “I was afraid you'd all been killed. Are you all right, Daisy? Did that monster hurt you?”

Daisy, who'd put up a valiant front since we'd crash-landed in the heather, suddenly burst into tears and rushed into Mr. Bellows's arms. Agnes hugged me while Sam grasped Marlin's hand and leaned in to whisper something in his ear.

“What do you mean?” Marlin demanded, pulling back from Sam and staring at the others. “Where is she?”

“That's just it,” Mr. Bellows said, looking mournfully at Daisy and me. “We don't know. When we got back to the compartment she was gone. We've searched the whole train. We even hoped she was with you—but clearly she's not. I'm afraid Spring-heeled Jack was the distraction.”

“For what?” I cried, although I'd already guessed.

“For the real kidnapping,” Agnes said, squeezing my arm. “Helen is gone.”

“HE CAN
'T HAVE
gotten far with her,” Marlin said. “I'll fly over the countryside—”

“And we'll hire a coach and search the surrounding villages,” Agnes said.

“We'll go with you,” Daisy said.

Agnes shook her head. “You two should go to Hawthorn Hall and you should go with them, Rupert. We have to find out what's happening there and find the vessel. When we've found Helen we'll send word with Marlin and Raven.”

And if they don't find her?

I couldn't give voice to that fear, and there was no time to argue about who should go where. The train whistle was blowing. I turned to Daisy. “If Helen were here she'd want us to go on to Hawthorn Hall and find out what's happened to Nathan.”

I thought I saw Marlin flinch but he stiffened his jaw and spoke firmly. “Exactly. You three go on. I'll send Raven as soon as we know something.” Then he took off, his wings beating up the dust on the deserted railway platform.

Sam went back on the train to get their luggage while Agnes made Mr. Bellows promise to look after Daisy and me. “Mrs. Hall wouldn't like me leaving them,” she fretted.

“My grandmother would understand you were doing your duty to the Order. Find Helen. . . .” My voice wobbled and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. “We'll find the vessel.”

The conductor blew the warning whistle again and Mr. Bellows ushered Daisy and me back onto the train. We turned and watched Sam and Agnes walking away, Agnes's yellow feather bobbing in the still dawn.

“They'll find her,” Daisy said, squeezing my hand. “Marlin won't rest until he does.”

I nodded, my throat too sore to form words. I knew Daisy was right. Marlin wouldn't rest until he'd found Helen, but I couldn't help feeling, as I followed Mr. Bellows and Daisy back to our compartment, that the brave crew we'd started out with had been sadly diminished and that that was exactly what van Drood wanted.

We had to switch trains in Edinburgh for a train to the Borders.

“You two should get some sleep,” Mr. Bellows commanded when we were settled in our new compartment. “I'll keep watch.”

He sat upright across from us, alert and anxious, one hand on the hilt of his dagger, the other gripping his arm rest, braced to spring at any intruder from the corridor or window. I knew he blamed himself for being asleep when Spring-heeled Jack took Daisy. Just as I blamed myself for leaving Helen behind.

“I can't sleep knowing that Helen is in van Drood's hands,” Daisy said. But after a few minutes she slumped against my shoulder and started to snore. I smiled at Mr. Bellows, and his rigid jaw muscles relaxed a millimeter, then tightened again.
I sighed and looked out the window, meaning to keep watch this time. I watched the blackened stone buildings and cobblestoned streets of Edinburgh pass by and then we were traveling past hills covered with yellow flowers. I asked Mr. Bellows what they were, hoping to distract him by calling on his botanical knowledge, but he only said “Gorse” and lapsed into a silence as stony as the streets and houses of Edinburgh.

We passed hillsides covered with yellow gorse and fields dotted with sheep and farms and little villages with cobblestone streets and whitewashed cottages. The morning fog died away for a brief spate of sun, which was extinguished by a violent thunderstorm that came rushing at us across a purple moor like an angry bull and then settled around the train. The rainy afternoon wore at my resolve to stay awake. I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again the sky had cleared to a brilliant lavender spread across a rocky mountainous landscape. I glanced across at Mr. Bellows, who was sitting in exactly the same pose of alertness. Only his face had softened a fraction as he looked at the landscape.

“See that pile of rocks in the distance?” he said, pointing out the window. I craned my neck to look and saw a lonely tower jutting up from a rugged ridge. “That's Duntuath. It's a—”

“Broch,” Daisy murmured. “I remember from your lecture on the Iron Age. Brochs are Iron Age forts. Duntuath means the north fort.”

“Always my most attentive student,” Mr. Bellows said, smiling for the first time in twelve hours. “We always called it the auld tooth. We knew we were almost there when we saw it. The school's on the next ridge—there!”

For a moment all the stress and fatigue fell away from Mr. Bellows's face and I could picture him as a schoolboy in short pants and braces. I looked past him out the window and made out the silhouette of a castle standing against the purple sky.

“It looks like Blythewood,” Daisy said, “only . . .”

“Older and in less repair,” Mr. Bellows finished for her. “Hawthorn Hall was standing before the first knights and ladies of the Order joined. The laird of Hawthorn Hall built Blythewood for the sisters of Merope and formed the first school. The knights continued to live in the old keep, and after Blythewood was removed to the States it was kept as a school for the training of boys.”

“It looks a bit . . .
lonely
,” Daisy said, drawing her lap rug up. “And cold.”

“Oh my, yes!” Mr. Bellows said proudly. “None of your fancy amenities like indoor plumbing or central heating. We bathed in the loch and wore our overcoats to bed. It was wizard!”

I'd never heard Mr. Bellows sound so happy. “I wonder if any of the old masters are still there. There was Old Cruthers who used to cane you if you got your declensions wrong and Mr. Chippendale—Old Chippie—who would give his crusts to underweight boys . . .”

Mr. Bellows went on reminiscing as the train descended into a wooded valley. The woods grew darker and denser as we went deeper into the valley, the trees growing so close to the tracks that branches scratched against our windows with a sound that reminded me uncomfortably of Spring-heeled Jack's metal claws. I caught glimpses of shadowy shapes flitting
between the trees—foxes, I supposed from their pointed ears and long tails, only they were bigger than any foxes I had seen before.

“Are there wolves in Scotland?” I asked, interrupting a story involving someone named Squinty stealing biscuits from the headmaster.

“Oh no,” Mr. Bellows assured me. “Not for years. Though this is the Hawthorn Wood we're passing through, and like the Blythe Wood it has some creatures in it that aren't quite of this world.”

“Because there's a door to Faerie here?” Daisy asked.

“There was, but the Order cleaned out all the fairy creatures a hundred years ago—only, well, there was always talk that some still survived in the deepest part of the woods. One of my mates, Flinty, lost a wager once to the school bully and had to spend the night in the woods, and he said the woods were full of boggles and ha'nts and wisps.”

“Oh, are wisps like lampsprites? I'd love to meet one.”

“No, you would not. . . .”

I kept a wary eye on the woods as Daisy and Mr. Bellows discussed varieties of Scottish fairies. It wasn't the fairies that I was worried about, it was the
tenebrae
. This was, after all, where the bell maker's daughters had been chased by shadow wolves.

“Duntuath, next station, Duntuath!”

“That's us,” Mr. Bellows said, springing to his feet, all the pent-up tension of the long train ride released. He plucked our bags from the overhead compartment, his happy expression fading when he saw Helen's valise.

“I'll take that,” I said, grabbing the bag. “I can carry both hers and mine. Helen will have our heads if we don't guard her wardrobe.”

“She'll be back and demanding where her hats are before we know it,” Daisy said in a strained, chipper voice. “I believe she's packed six.”

I laughed and started to explain what the hatboxes really contained—and then had to put down one of the bags to find my handkerchief when I thought of telling Nathan what had happened.
If
Nathan was still here and
if
he wasn't shadow-ridden. Now that we were almost at Hawthorn Hall I felt frightened at the prospect of seeing Nathan. What if he were in van Drood's thrall? What if I'd lost him as well as Helen? I didn't think I could bear it.

“You're tired,” Daisy said, reading my thoughts, “and that makes everything look bleaker. Even if Nathan is shadow-ridden, the news that Helen has been taken will knock him back to his senses. You wait and see.”

I nodded and returned Daisy's brave smile, but as I followed her off the train I thought that it might well have been Helen disappearing last fall that had driven Nathan to the shadows in the first place.

The village of Duntuath did nothing to revive my spirits. Although the sky had been clear from the train, a light rain was falling in the village, as if it always rained there.

“Hm, there was always a coach waiting at the station for us, but of course no one knows we're coming. There's bound to
be a coach for hire at the tavern . . . ah, there it is—the Bells. It looks just the same as in my day. We used to sneak in when the masters were on holiday.” Mr. Bellows chuckled. “I remember one time Buffles had too much ale. . . .” Mr. Bellows told the story of Buffles and the too much ale while we crossed a muddy street to a low half-timbered building from which a wooden sign painted with a faded picture of a bell swung crookedly in the wind. The shutters were drawn—as were, I noticed, all the shutters on all the houses on the street.

“It looks like everyone's gone on holiday,” Daisy remarked.

“Well it
is
the summer term,” Mr. Bellows said. “There were always a few lads who stayed on at the school because they didn't, er, have homes to go to or they needed to earn extra money doing chores over the holidays. It was ripping fun, actually, because we had the whole place to ourselves and could go exploring.”

“You didn't have anyplace to go on the holidays?” Daisy asked.

Mr. Bellows turned pink and pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. “Just an aunt in Hartford, and it hardly seemed worth the fare to travel back for the summer. Ah, here we are. Same bells over the door. Good old Bells! I remember once Buffles rigged up a horn to toot when the door opened—gave the locals quite a start, I'll tell you. They chased Buffles right out of town with pitchforks!”

The opening of the door set off a jangling that sounded more like rusted tin cans clanking together than bells. It roused the attention of all the occupants of the tavern—three men seated at the bar, two beside a smoking fire, and an aproned
innkeeper standing behind the bar. I wouldn't say they looked startled, though. They turned slowly to regard us with deep suspicion and animosity.

“I say, good man,” Mr. Bellows addressed the innkeeper loudly in an accent I didn't recognize. “Would you be so good as to rustle up some tea for the ladies and a pint of your best ale for me? We've had a long journey and a cold one.” He ended with a wink for one of the gentlemen at the bar, who shifted on his stool, releasing an odor of peat and sheep manure.