Prospero's Children (25 page)

“You’d have to trust in Hope,” said Fern. “Is that it?”

“No,” Ragginbone replied shortly. “Hope needs something tangible to sustain it. You would have to rely on Faith. Only Faith can endure in the teeth of the evidence.”

The Capels walked home in the late afternoon to find a vaguely anxious Robin being soothed by Mrs. Wicklow in the kitchen. “Just as I told you,” she said as they came in. “
They’re
all right. Children don’t think you might be worrying: they just go their own way and then look all injured when you want to know where they’ve been. Anyhow, they had t’ dog along to take care of them. I wasn’t too fond of her to start with, but I reckon she’s not one to get lost, even on t’ moors, and no one’s going to give ’em any trouble when she’s around.” Lougarry had risen sufficiently in Mrs. Wicklow’s estimation to acquire gender, Fern noted.

After supper she went early to her room, leaving Will and her father to argue over the mysteries of mah-jongg. The picture under the bed seemed to draw her: she wanted to take it out and study it, losing herself in that postage-stamp panorama of a city she had never seen, roaming sunlit street and shadowy alley in search of some unknown goal, neither the key nor the Door but something else, something she would not recognize until she found it, or until it found
her
. She resisted the urge, burying herself under the covers, craving sleep, afraid to dream.

She awoke hours later, with the realization that she must have slept after all. The rectangle of window behind the curtains was just beginning to acquire a tinge of gray and a few birds were piping in the dawn. Her mind was very clear. She could remember no dreams but while she slept her doubts seemed to have rearranged themselves and a necessary resolve had taken over, not dismissing fear but putting it in its place. She got up and dressed, thinking in passing that her clothes would be all wrong and she didn’t speak the language, yet curiously confident that somehow these details would be taken care of. Then she took the picture out from under the bed.

VIII

It was Will who found she had gone. He had woken early with a vague feeling of wrongness, as if, only seconds before he opened his eyes, the entire world had slipped on its axis by a fraction of a degree, leaving everything slightly misplaced. Instinct told him he had missed something essential; if he had surfaced barely a moment beforehand he would have seen it—whatever it was—but now he was too late for all time. A horrible foreboding settled on his stomach. It was much too early for any sane adolescent to think about getting up un-prompted but after a brief attempt at a lie-in he scrambled out of bed, pulled on a dressing gown, and headed automatically for his sister’s room. When she did not answer his knock he tried the door and went in. The sight of the vacant bed was disproportionately shocking; after all, he told himself, there was no reason why Fern, too, should not have risen prematurely, maybe gone for a walk. There was no need to feel this awful black panic. Then he saw the picture.

She had propped it up on her dressing-table, in front of the mirror. Will, who had not looked closely at it before, found his gaze drawn inward until it was enmeshed in that tiny nest of details almost too fine for the human eye to distinguish. For an instant he imagined that microscopic vista was alive: he glimpsed the turning of wheels, the pacing of feet, the undulation of assorted robes, all on a scale so small it reached his brain as little more than a garbled message, magnified by some trick of his fancy into a fleeting reality. He rubbed his eyes, and the impression was gone. But it had been more than enough to alarm him. He raced downstairs and out into the garden, shoeless and wearing only pajama-bottoms under his dressing gown, calling for Lougarry. He might have run across the moor in search of Ragginbone just as he was if the she-wolf hadn’t leaped the low wall and come bounding to meet him. “She’s gone,” he said, dropping to a crouch on a level with her yellow gaze. Unusually, she licked his face, as if to steady him. “I think she’s gone into the past. There’s this picture—it was Alison’s but Fern kept it. I hadn’t realized what it was, the drawing is so minute, but when I looked just now it was a city, like Atlantis might have been, and it was
moving
. Fetch Ragginbone. She can’t manage alone. We’ve got to help her.” Lougarry licked him again, fixing him with her strangely calming stare. Then she turned, sprang back over the wall, and vanished up the hill toward the moor.

Indoors, Will dressed, fidgeted, wandered into the kitchen to burn himself some toast. Ragginbone arrived in less than an hour but to Will, shoveling successive pieces of toast-shaped ash into the rubbish-bin, the waiting seemed interminable. They mounted the stairs very softly, hoping not to disturb Robin. “Ah,
that
picture,” said the Watcher, bending to examine the etching. “I should have studied it more carefully. Stupid of me. Still—who knows?—maybe it’s for the best. The Door is open: even without such a clear passage, she would have found a way. There is always a way, if the heart is sure.” He straightened up, massaging his back, as stiff as the oak-tree he sometimes chose to resemble. “Well, there’s nothing we can do now. She’s gone where we can’t follow. I’m afraid we’re condemned to wait.”

“Wait?” Will’s face flushed with unexpected anger. “Just
wait
? B-but—we could go after her, we could help—”

“No,” Ragginbone said quietly. “We haven’t the Gift. I’ve lost it, and you have yet to find it, if it is there to find. We must stay here.”

“But the Door’s open!” Will said. “I can feel the picture, pulling me in. I can
feel
it—”

“Maybe. But the key calls only to the Gifted. Even if we were allowed to pass we would have no chance of achieving the task, less than none of getting back. And we might be a burden to your sister. She has chosen to go alone because she knows she can act best alone. She showed that in the barn, for all her failure. She has courage, and steadfastness, and luck. What could we give her which is worth more?”

“But it’s impossible!” Will insisted. “How can she find the key under a tidal wave? How can she lock the Door when it no longer exists? And you said yourself she won’t be able to get back. It’s
impossible
.”

“Magic is impossible,” said Ragginbone.

They went back downstairs to the kitchen and the Watcher dosed Will with sweet tea and prepared impeccable toast. “When will we know?” asked Will. “I mean, if she’s going to get back—somehow—
when
will she get back?”

“That, I fear, is the crucial question. When you travel physically in time, there is nothing to hold you to the present, so the moment of your return can be rather imprecise. Although you maintain a certain sympathetic link with the time zone from which you came, it grows more tenuous the longer you stay in the past, and it tends to ignore specific hours and minutes. You might reappear an instant after your departure, even though you had been gone a month. Or a week later, or a year. You might miss the present altogether, and land in the future. It’s all somewhat haphazard.”

“You’re really cheering me up,” said Will. “I’m beginning to realize why Fern didn’t always trust you.”

“You should never trust anyone completely,” said Ragginbone, smiling a half-smile which snaked up one side of his face. “Unpredictability is a vital aspect of intelligence.”

“I wish you’d stop being clever,” Will grumbled. “Look, there must be
something
we can do. I can’t just sit here . . .”

“You could pray,” said the Watcher.

When Robin came down to breakfast Ragginbone had gone. “Fern went out early,” said Will, wearing his customary insouciance as if it had shrunk in the wash. “She said she might be gone all day. She took some sandwiches.” He felt the sandwiches made the story more convincing. Anyway, enough toast had been burned to account for several slices of bread. His father would not have noticed any discrepancy but Mrs. Wicklow, when she arrived, undoubtedly would.

Robin digested this information along with his desultory breakfast. “Is your sister—” he fished for words “—is she, well, you know,
all right
?” Will looked genuinely blank. “I mean, not in love or something, is she? All this mooning about—going for walks by herself—she’s never acted like this before.”

“Of course she’s not in love,” Will said scornfully. Fern, his tone implied, had her failings, but falling in love was not one of them. “She doesn’t moon, either. She’s just . . . thinking a lot. I expect it’s her age. Anyway, people are different in the country. In London, when you go out, you go
to
somewhere: to the cinema, to the shops, to see your friends. In the country there’s nowhere particular to go
to
and we don’t have many friends yet, so we go for walks. You should be pleased. It’s awfully healthy.”

“You must be dreadfully bored,” said Robin, with a revival of his chronic guilt. “Maybe we could invite some of your friends down—”

“Oh no,” said Will, adding hastily: “There isn’t much point, is there? Not if we’re going to France soon.”

“Didn’t think you were very keen,” Robin said, accepting the reprieve with mistrust.

“Well, I don’t know.” Will shrugged, vague before his time, switching moods with teenage unpredictability. “I daresay it would be a good idea. When Fern gets back.”

“Gets
back
?” Robin jumped. “How long is this walk going to take?”

Several millennia, I should think, Will said, but to himself. “I mean, I’ll
talk
to her when she gets back. Don’t be silly, Dad.”

Quelled, Robin subsided into a silence punctuated only by his tea, departing presently to read a proposal, study some color-plates, and resort, inevitably, to the telephone. I wish he would go to London, Will thought, sighing over the paradox that his father’s presence, so desirable while he was absent, was now the bane of his life. I wish he would stop worrying. I’ve got enough to worry about, without having to worry about his worrying. I hope to God Fern’s okay . . .

I wonder if that’s a kind of prayer, hoping to God.

Just before lunchtime, a shout having elicited no response, Robin went looking for Will to summon him downstairs. He found his son in Fern’s room, staring at the picture on her dressing-table. Will started when he walked in, placing himself in front of the etching, but he was too slender to obscure it completely. “Haven’t I seen that at the gallery?” Robin exclaimed. “It must be the one Javier was looking for.
Lost
City
—he mentioned it at the funeral. Fern must have stumbled on it after all. I’ll give him a call this afternoon. He said he’d be in York this week, visiting clients or artists; I’ve got the number somewhere. At least that’s one thing off my mind.”

“No!” said Will. “I mean—it can wait, can’t it? What’s the urgency?”

“Javier wants it back,” said Robin. “It doesn’t belong to us, you know. What’s the fuss about?”

“I like it,” Will said desperately. “I—I’d like to keep it. Fern likes it.”

“I suppose I could make him an offer . . .”

He carried the picture downstairs, depositing it on one of the armchairs in the drawing room. “Rather unusual,” he remarked, “a colored etching. Complicated process. Looks sort of ghostly, doesn’t it? What’s that bit in the middle?”

“That’s supposed to be the city,” Will said. “It’s done awfully small: I don’t know how he managed it. Don’t stare at it so hard, Dad: you’re going cross-eyed.”

“Funny thing,” said Robin. “Almost thought it was moving. Some kind of visual trick, I imagine. Clever stuff.” As he turned away his gaze skimmed the room automatically, and the mild anxiety-lines on his brow deepened. “Where’s that statue gone? The one Fern hated so much? Hasn’t put it in the cellar, has she?”

“Well, no,” Will faltered, groping for a suitable explanation. “I’m afraid . . . it got broken.”

“
Broken?
But it was solid stone!” Will, unable to think of any further elaboration, remained prudently silent. “It was an antique,” Robin went on. “Probably pretty valuable. How on earth did it get broken? I know Fern didn’t care for it, but—”

“Alison did it,” Will said flatly. “I don’t know how, but she did it. The carpet must still be littered with the chips.”

“Are you sure it was Alison?” Robin said. “I won’t be angry if . . . well, not very. So long as you tell me the truth . . .”

His son responded with a frigid stare. “I’m sure.”

“Sorry,” Robin said awkwardly. “I just don’t understand . . . Did she drop it, do you know? Mind you, even if she had, the floor’s carpeted, and anyway—You did say it happened in here?”

“I think so,” said Will, distancing himself from the incident. “So Alison told us.”

“I suppose there could have been a flaw in the stone,” Robin mused. “One of those invisible cracks that goes suddenly when it’s struck in the right way. Or rather, in the wrong way. Still, it would have to be struck pretty hard . . .”

“Let’s have lunch,” Will said, taking his father firmly by the elbow. “Or it will get cold and Mrs. Wicklow will be offended.”

“It’s a salad,” said Robin.

“Then it’ll get warm.”

Afterward, while Robin telephoned Javier Holt, Will slipped out of the back door and went in search of the Watcher.

“I don’t like it,” Ragginbone said when he heard Will’s news. “You should have hidden the picture.”

“You didn’t suggest it before,” Will said indignantly.

“I expected you to act intelligently without a prompt,” Ragginbone retorted with casual unfairness. “Well, it may not be too late. You said the ambulant is in York. How long would it be since your father called him?”

Will hunched a shoulder. “Not sure. A couple of hours at least. Maybe more. You said you’d stay in the vicinity, but— there’s a lot of vicinity around here. This was the last place I looked.” They were sitting on the bank of the Yarrow, close to the spot where the thing had come out of the water. “Why did you come here?”

“I was waiting,” said Ragginbone.

“For Fern?”

“For anything. For a sign, good or bad. Come.” He got to his feet. “We must go back to the house. We have to conceal the picture; if necessary, we must destroy it.”

“What exactly are you afraid of?” Will asked.

But Ragginbone was already striding up the slope toward the road.

The afternoon was intermittently cloudy with a breeze that took the heat out of the sun: swift shadows dipped and rose over valley and hill, switching the landscape from radiant to somber so rapidly it was as if you could actually see the world turning beneath a motionless sky. Will had a fleeting vision of himself swept along in the hectic rush of Time while his sister was left far behind, cut off on some remote shoal of the past where light and life would never come again. Being young, he needed reassurance; he had not yet learned to confront the irrevocable without fear. He clutched at Ragginbone’s sleeve, but even as he started to speak they reached the road, and the strengthening wind blew his words away.

Ahead they saw the pale gleam of a car turning onto the driveway. Sunlight flashed off the chromium in a sudden stab of fire.

“That’s him,” Will said, forgetting his wider anxieties.

“Ah,” said Ragginbone, “but whom?”

The front door was shut when they got there and they lost precious seconds running round to the back. At a word from the Watcher, Lougarry had matched her pace to theirs. Mrs. Wicklow glared in astonishment and disapproval at the stranger invading her kitchen, with his weather-wizened face and his scarecrow garb. “William!” she said—always an indication of severity—“I don’t know who this is but your father—”

“He’s a friend. Where’s Javier Holt?”

“Oh,
him
.” One object of disapprobation temporarily displaced another. “He’s in t’ drawing room, packing up a picture I think. Mr. Robin left him to it and went back to t’ study—”

But Will, stranger, and dog were already clattering down the hall. Mrs. Wicklow followed them; they heard her calling for Robin even as Ragginbone threw open the drawing room door, murmuring a hissing word in Atlantean by way of insurance. The room was empty. The picture leaned against the chair-back as Robin had left it but the glass protecting it was shattered as if by a blow, spider-cracks webbing out from a focal point at the very center, and the paper itself had been ripped from top to bottom, the irregular tear gaping to show a section of the image was missing. The Lilliputian vista of the city had been completely obliterated. “What’s he done?” said Will. “Now Fern will
never
get back—”