The Door in the Moon (9 page)

When she couldn't get the car through the undergrowth any farther, Rebecca stopped the engine and sat there, hearing the sudden summer silence of the Wood. She opened the car door, slipped across the sticky leather seat, and climbed out.

The warm night smelled of honeysuckle. She breathed it gratefully, then rolled a plastic bottle of water from under the dashboard and drank deep, her eyes watching the tree trunks, their dappled bark, the motes of moonlight and tiny insects, the flitting secret bats.

Wiping her mouth, she turned.

The gates to the drive of Wintercombe Abbey were wide open. Not only that, they couldn't be closed, because ivy and clematis had smothered them, and tiny saplings of birch had sprouted vigorously in clumps just inside. The stone lions were blindfolded with green leaves, Piers's cameras lost deep in a mass of bramble.

It scared her. She grabbed her bag, locked the car, and hurried on.

The drive was a thin path, barely there. It had always been overgrown, but now, she realized with a small shiver of fear, the Wood had rooted into it, devoured it. A million stems and bines and threadlike mycelia were encroaching above and below the soil. Small trees erupted through the leaf litter. She edged around them in astonishment. How could this have happened in a few days?

She didn't know why, but she began to run. Her breath came short; she had to duck under leaves that brushed her neck like fingers. Somewhere the croak of nightjars started up like wizened laughter.

Rebecca stopped.

Before her in the gloom was a crashing, threshing rhododendron, its huge red flowerets massed with moths and beetles. They rose in disturbed flocks; the bush shook, and a small, white, anxious face peered out at her.

She gasped in relief. “Piers? What on earth is going on?”

He was breathless; as he came out she saw he was holding the baby, awkwardly, in some trailing shawl. She glimpsed a few of the cats huddled around his feet.

“Oh it's you!” The little man stared around, distracted. “I thought . . . They'll find me if I stay here.”

“What's happened? Where's Jake and—”

“It's Janus! He's coming through!”

She didn't wait for more. She was already past him and running toward the Abbey, and he was scrambling after her, Lorenzo giving a tiny wail of hunger, Piers trying desperately to muffle the sound.

Fear like heat erupted inside her, a molten terror. If the mirror was involved, Maskelyne would be there.

He would do anything to save it.

And he knew Janus.

Sprawled roots tripped her, dark shadow confused her. She stumbled, picked herself up, realized she wasn't even sure where the Abbey was, until Piers hissed, “Left,” and she ducked under a low branch and fell out into dazzling moonlight, the façade of the building a silver slant of stone. Dropping the bag, she raced up the steps and slammed into Gideon at the door.

“Where is he? Where's Maskelyne?”

His face was pale as ivory. “Inside. Rebecca—”

“He's dead.
Oh my God I know he's dead!
”

Gideon took her hand with spidery white fingers. His eyes were green, a little disappointed. “No,” he said. “He's not dead. Not quite.”

Revolution erupts from the despair of the poor and the heedless extravagance of the rich.

Often the same men are responsible for both.

A History of the Late Revolution in France
,
by Maxim Chevelin

S
ARAH STOOD IN
the kitchens with flour up to her elbows. As she kneaded the dough, she sneaked a rapid gaze around.

There must be over fifty servants, hurrying in and out, snatching up dishes, yelling in French. The tallest chef, a man in a white coat, tasted and basted and broke into rages so incandescent she thought he would explode. An entourage of minor cooks fled at his command like mice from a cat.

“Keep your head down, girl!” Madame Lepage whisked behind her, half hidden behind a pile of linen tablecloths.

The old woman was small and wizened and smelled of onions. Her skin was olive and her eyes dark beads of greed; she bore no resemblance to Sarah. So the aunt story was stupid.

But no one here had time to care.

This kitchen, and the one behind it, and the dairy and scullery and ice room and larders were a tumult of cooking, baking, roasting, toasting, of crashes of dishes, slamming of plates, the roaring of the fires, the crackle of fat dripping from skewered hogs on the great turn spits.

She had never known such rich, mouth-watering, savory smells.

Crushing lumps of flour in her fingers, she remembered the gray world of the labyrinth, its carefully processed food, accurate in vitamins and minerals, blandly tasteless.

All afternoon she had nibbled and savored and eaten fragments of hot pastry, stewed apple, pork crackling, soft melted onion, crunchy salads, creamy lemon syllabub.

Her hair was coming undone and there was a floury smudge on her forehead. She was as hot as it was possible to be without fainting.

But she was actually enjoying it.

“All right. Wash your hands and come with me.”

The small Frenchwoman was back, with another pile of linen. When Sarah was clean she said, “Your cap. We go upstairs now. Silence. No speech. No English.”

“Yes, but—”

The linen was dumped in her hands. “Do as I say. Follow, look, and watch. I show you the salons of the ball. Keep your eyes to the floor. Like a servant girl, not a robber thief.”

Sarah wondered how much they were paying her. As she followed the woman between the tables, she whispered, “How do you know Long Tom?”

“Many years, in London. I was on the boards. I was the French Nightingale. I sang in all the gentlemen's clubs, the coffee houses. Tom and I, we are old friends in crime.”

They slipped out of the warmth and into a drafty corridor. Sarah said, “So . . . who's the boss? Tom?”

“Of course not. The contessa, always.”

Sarah felt a tingle of excitement. “Contessa?”

“So bold, so clever. A queen of thieves, that one. Beautiful, a child, but she laughs like a man. They say her heart was once broken, but I believe she loves only danger.” Madame turned the corner and stopped. “Attend. No English now.”

She led the way up a circling stair and suddenly they were in corridors of startling size, all hung with swags of white satin, decorated with huge chaplets of greenery. Servants stood busy on steps and ladders, and as she hurried underneath, her head demurely down, Sarah marveled again at how the scents of the past were so much more vivid than her own time. The lavender crushed under her feet was eye-watering in its pungency, the roses and honeysuckle and all the plants she didn't know exhaling glorious scents.

They came to a vast dining room, tinkling with glass chandeliers.

“This is where the guests eat their buffet. Come through.”

She followed between the long tables. There would be hundreds of guests. Presumably at some stage there would be entertainment; the automata must be part of that—that was how Long Tom would get in. But what did this have to do with Jake? Unless . . .

A thought struck her so swiftly her eyes blinked.
Jake had
journeyed
before.
Not in this time, no. But he'd met people who had the mirror! Symmes, for one. And for another—

She whispered, “Madame! One more question please. Does the contessa have another name?”

The woman threw her a glance of disapproval. “Once, maybe. But we people of Mercury, we change our names like clothes.”

“But once she did. Beyond the mirror.”

“Ah. Well. Yes. She was known as Moll.”

Sarah took a deep breath, understanding like lightning, but before she could even think about it, Madame Lepage opened the double doors and they were in the ballroom, an expanse of polished wood floor, among a dazzle of crystal chandeliers and sunlight, and the grand enfilade of rooms, lemon and blue and gold, lay in a straight line before her.

“
Et voilà!
” Madam Lepage said, pointing. “The door in the moon.”

Jake sipped the wine, to ease the shock.

“Not sweet enough, Jake? There's plenty of other—”

“For God's sake Moll.” He put the glass down with a rattle. “Tell me about my father.”

He leaped up and paced about. The room was dim and quiet. It was hard to believe the river lapped at the feet of the ancient building, that Paris roared with riot around them. “Is he here? Is Alicia with him?”

“Alicia.” She scowled. “Symmes's dotty daughter? No, she's not.”

He came back and stood over her. “Tell me! In the old days, Moll, you wouldn't have wanted me to be unhappy. You would have told me straightaway.”

“We were good mates then, Jake.”

“We still are.” He stepped forward, hands gripped. “But I've got to know, Moll. Got to see him. Or I won't raise a finger in your crazy heist.”

She dropped her cutlery and stood, the rich maroon velvet of her dress gleaming. “Okay. We don't have much time. Tonight is midsummer. The ball starts at eight p.m.—four hours, Jake. If I show you where he is, you'll get the whole thing. Come on.”

Abruptly she turned and opened a small door in the paneling. Beyond was a stair; she ran up it quickly and he followed, heart thudding with anticipation. If he could get his father back he'd steal anything from anyone. In fact, he'd often thought of being a master criminal. Wharton wouldn't like it, of course. But he need never know.

“Here we are, Jake. The inner sanctum.” She flung the door open and went in. He saw an empty room, containing only a chaise longue, with a ragged cloak on it, and opposite a dark rectangle of glass, reassembled in its silver frame.

The mirror.

He stood staring into it. “You took this from Symmes's house.”

“After I heard about the explosion. Silly old fool had thrown himself in.” She sounded peeved. “I would have shared the bracelet with him, eventually. He should have known that. I wonder where he went.”

“He went to the future. Janus found him.”

Her eyes widened. “The future! Hell's teeth, he must've loved that! How far?”

“Right to the end.” Jake turned. “Right to the end of time, Moll. But by about 1910 the mirror is back in Alicia's house, so . . .”

“So that means I'll replace it. In my future.” She laughed. “Lord, Jake, all this living backward. It makes you giddy, don't it.”

“Moll. My father . . .”

She sighed, picked up the ragged cloak and a red cap, made a small adjustment to the silver bracelet on her wrist. Then, with a speed so sudden he gasped, she grasped his hand and pulled him into the mirror.

Rebecca stepped back from the sofa.

Maskelyne lay still and unmoving, his breathing a faint lifting of his chest. His head was flung back, his hair dark on the pillow.

“We should get him to bed,” Venn said.

“No.” She was firm. “We don't move him. He stays near the mirror.”

“A doctor, then.”

“What's the use? He's stable. He just won't wake up. It's not illness, it's sorcery.”

It was as if his soul had gone, she thought. Crashed so far down inside him, even she couldn't make him know she was here. What had he done? Had she lost him for good now, this dark man with his strange secrets?

Venn prowled the lab. Maybe he felt guilty, because he said, “I'm sorry this happened. We need him . . .”

“Then do something! He stopped Janus for you—he can't do any more. It's up to you to find Jake and Sarah.” She glared around at them, at Gideon moodily tangling the malachite fibers, at Piers sitting staring at his boots.

The small man looked up, flicked a glance at Venn. “She's right, Excellency.”

Venn turned, quickly. “Piers, play me back what happened when Maskelyne spoke to David, the last time, in Florence. He said something to him . . . Something about the amber stone.”

Rebecca expected the little man to hunt out a recording but instead Piers put both hands together, stared straight ahead, thought for a second, and then opened his mouth. The voice that came out was not his own, but Maskelyne's; not a copy, but a recording so accurate it made her shiver.

“First, listen to me now. We found Dee's manuscript. What it says is important. He says
Time is defeated only by love
. You must remember that! And the snake's eye on the bracelet. It opens. Use what you find inside.”

Venn nodded. He slipped off the bracelet and stared at it. Without looking at Rebecca, he said, “Did you know he'd had dealings with Janus?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn't tell us.”

“I trust him. And I don't know what went on. I don't know anything.” She stared down at the sleeping man, while Piers brought a blanket and tucked it around him. “I just think that he comes from somewhere so far back in the past it's almost legendary. He's traveled all over time. And when he threw himself into the mirror without the bracelet, it was a terrible journey. It broke him to bits. His mind, his memories. He's all shards and slivers.”

Venn came and stood beside her. “You should look for a human lover, Rebecca. He'll never make you happy.”

She looked at him, straight. “You're hardly the one to give me that advice.”

His laugh was dark and bitter. He lifted the bracelet, laid it on the bench. “Piers. Take a look.”

The little man was there in a second. Lovingly he fingered the exquisite silver band, the snake's head and tongue. Then he touched the amber stone of the eye.

“Oh yes. Definitely. All sorts of odd currents. Not sure if . . . no. Well, maybe this . . .”

It opened.

Silently, on a minute silver hinge, the amber stone opened like a tiny door, and at the same time there was the softest chime of sound, so melodious that Gideon shivered, remembering the songs of the Shee.

He stepped closer, peered over Piers's shoulder.

The mirror rippled.

Maskelyne, deep in his coma, murmured a word and then lay still.

Venn said, “What is that?”

Inside the tiny cavity under the stone was a spiral fossil, an ammonite, marked with tiny numbers. They seemed to spiral inward, growing smaller and smaller, into the heart of the coiled creature, so impossibly infinitesimal that even when Piers prised it out and put it under the microscope and they took it in turns to stare in, there was no end to the sequence. Gideon looked up, dazzled. “It goes on forever . . .”

“Maybe it does. Maybe we're looking at infinity right there.” Venn walked back to the mirror and stared at his warped reflection. “I saw it once before, in a bottomless crevasse on Katra Simba. White and deadly and never, never, ever coming to an end.” He turned. “Can we use this?”

“Ooh, I think so.” Piers was agitated with excitement. “Because you may not have noticed this, Excellency, but . . .” He ran over and dragged a stool to the mirror, stood on it, and examined the top of the frame. “
Yes!
Right here . . . do you see? There's a small cavity. I've spotted it before, but it's quite empty and I never had a clue what it was for. Maybe that little spiral galaxy would fit in . . .”