The Door in the Moon (14 page)

At the top she stopped, bumping into Maskelyne.

She peeped around him and stared, astonished.

Perched on the banister rail was a small wooden bird with one eye made from an old bead. And yet it not only moved, but spoke. Tipping its head on one side, it said, “Hi. Look. Sorry to bother you. Do you happen to know where a mortal called Sarah is?”

Moll's diary.

Some nights, Jake, when the crib's been cracked and we're sitting on a bench in the Dog and Duck drinking porter, and Long Tom is wasted with his arm round the barmaid, I look up and see the moon peeping in. And I think “Jake's seeing that. Whenever he is.”

Always makes me grin.

As if you're not that far away at all.

Really.

Jake had never seen such luxury.

As he strolled in with Moll on his arm, through the crowds of men and women and children, he thought again that the past was more than a different place. It was as if the world moved here at a slightly slower speed, with subtly altered colors, a curious sheen. As if he had somehow gotten inside a film, or among the characters of a story, and though he heard them talk and felt the draft of their passing, there was a fine mismatch between them and him.

Had his father felt like this?
And did it fade away the longer you stayed, fade away to nothing, because in Florence his father had been married and had a son, and that had to be a real relationship, hadn't it?

Moll said, “Clock that?”

Startled, he turned. “What?”

“There. Room one on the plan. Pay attention, Jake.”

Smoothly she steered him into the vast salon, and he took a drink from a tray as he passed the footman at the door. Moll took one too and sipped it.

“Champagne! Not bad either. Right. Check this out. Open doorways to the terrace on your right. When the fireworks start, everyone'll all go gallivanting out there. Straight ahead, three reception rooms. Each leading out of the other. Each one bloody bigger than the one before. Shall we?”

They entered the first. It was a confection of pale blue paneling encrusted with gold-leaf everywhere. Amazing, Jake thought, but cloying.

Moll spun around, her dress swishing. “Plenty of diamonds, Jake. On all those pretty white necks.”

Vast chandeliers dripped from the ceiling. The room was filling with people, already hot. The wave of perfume and sweat made him feel sick. Restless, he said, “How long to go?”

“About half an hour. Make out you're loving it, Jake.”

They promenaded through the crowd. The second salon was yellow and gold, the third white and gold. Finally they entered a vast, emptier space with a gleaming wooden floor.

He took a deep breath of relief. “The ballroom.”

“Spot on, old thing. Musicians in the gallery above. Only way out of here the way you come in. Except for servants' entries behind the screens. And our little secret.”

She was loving this. For him too, a growing sense of excitement gathered like a knot in his stomach. His senses sharpened. “Secret? What secret?”

She fluttered her fan. “Behind you, Jake.”

He gazed and saw the paintings.

“Wow,” he muttered. “Impressive.”

The ceiling of the room was pure glass, brilliant with stars. The great wall below the musicians' gallery was painted with a vast mural of gods and goddesses—Zeus and Hera and Apollo and Aphrodite—sitting in a celestial heaven, under their feet images of planets and stars, sun and moon. Real stones were studded in the wall; as he stared he caught their glitter, rubies and emeralds, sapphires and opals.

The contrast with the stinking streets of Paris was hard to believe.

“This is crazy! Does any of this survive?”

“Burned down by the mob,” she said softly. “Tonight.”

It chilled him. All these people, all this world, and in hours it would be gone, never to come again, and only he and Moll, in all this crowd, knew it would happen. He wondered for a crazy moment if anything they could do now would change things, if some word overheard, some accidental brush against a stranger's elbow might trigger a series of events that would twist fate a different way.

Moll said, “See it? The secret way in.”

For a moment he didn't. Then, as she pointed discreetly, he saw that between the feet of Ares and Hermes, rolled there like a discarded toy, was the round silver-painted surface of the moon, all cracked and shimmering. And cut into it, so tiny and perfectly fitted it was almost impossible to see, a small doorway.

“That's where we go,” Moll whispered in his ear. “Stroke of midnight.”

The music began.

Jake bowed. Moll giggled and bobbed. They danced away into the crowd.

It was now or never. Wharton had no idea how long Summer's infatuation with him would last or how safe it was in either case. But he had to make use of it.

As he leaned on his elbow in the grass she tipped his head and examined his graying hair.

“Would you like to look younger, George?”

“No. No, I'm fine, really.”

“But I want you to.”

“I'm fine. The mature look . . . it suits me.” He sat up. When had his clothes become this white linen suit? “Summer, look, there's only one thing I really want. I want to find Jake. Is that so hard to understand? Just to go and help Venn find Jake.”

Summer lazed back. She regarded him with an unnerving silence, and just as he was starting to sweat she put her beautiful red lips together and whistled.

A male Shee as thin as a beanpole lowered itself upside down from a branch above.

“Do we know where he is?” Summer demanded.

“No problem.” It slithered lower and whispered in her ear.

Wharton risked a quick look around for Piers. The clearing seemed empty.

Summer laughed, a peal of pure delight, and clapped her small hands. “Oh that's perfect! Let's go, George!”

She grabbed Wharton, hauled him up, and began to drag him through the trees. “Everyone! Come on!”

He gasped, anxious to keep up. “Wait, Summer. Listen. I don't want them
all
coming!” He had a sudden nightmare vision of the host of the Shee crowding and cavorting into the Abbey, and it would have been his fault, he would have brought them there.

This wasn't what he wanted at all.

Summer laughed a heedless silver laugh. As she tugged him on, her fingers had the strength of roots and bines, as if they grew into his. He crashed through the Wood, snagged by brambles, torn by briars. His linen suit slithered and transformed around him, became breeches, a white satin coat, shoes with buckles. He had to grab the purple flower and hold it tight, stumbling over roots out into the graveled drive, running now between a line of men holding acrid flaring torches, while before him Wintercombe Abbey rose against the sky.

Only . . .

He stopped.

This was not Wintercombe.

It was a frothy confection of a building, a palace streaming with light, crowded with carriages, and all the Shee, in their coats and cloaks of metallic blues and greens, their starling eyes black with eagerness, were streaming past him and up its curved steps.

So much for her obliging his every whim.

He said, “I thought . . .”

Summer squeezed his fingers. “Surprise! You want to find Jake—well, Jake is here! And it can be our wedding ball as well, George! How perfect is that?”

He stared at her dress of red satin, her delicate white feet.

“Er . . . fantastic,” he managed.

She took his hand and led him in past the flunkeys, and no one even saw them.

Far behind, deep in the shadows of the undergrowth, a small figure in perfect camouflage peeled himself from the bark of a tree and shook his head in despair.

“Give me strength!” Piers remarked to no one. “I cannot believe how stupid these mortals are.”

Sarah was on the prowl.

She slipped open the door to the housekeeper's room, slid inside, closed it behind her.

Quickly she crossed to the wall, opened the third cupboard on the left, and found them hanging in lines, just as Madame Lepage had said.

The keys.

Big, small, ornate, simple. For diaries, presses, armoires, desks, each numbered and with a small white label above.

Number 46 looked ordinary. A small copper key with a looped top, a snatch of faded red ribbon tied to it.

She took it out, closed the cupboard, was across the carpeted floor and at the door in seconds.

She waited.

A quick double rap.

She slipped out and was walking beside Madame Lepage, down the corridor among the hurrying servants.

“Got it?”

“Yes.”

“
Bon
. Clever girl. Now get in position and wait for the clock.”

At the doorway of the blue-and-gold salon, Venn was watching the noisy crowd.

“We'll never find him in this,” Gideon murmured.

“He's got to be here.” Venn's eyes noted each passing dancer, but the swirling patterns and the grotesque masks made it difficult. A servant came by and offered them each a black mask; Venn took one and slipped it on. Gideon did the same. His green eyes surveyed the scene through slanted eyeholes. He was used to the riotous dances of the Shee, but this was different, a chamber of hothouse smells, of flowers and glass, of more mortals than he had ever seen together, chatting, laughing, drinking—preening men, slim girls, older women behind a fluttering wall of fans, the colors of their clothes more muted than the Shee's, the fabric more heavy.