Ambergate (2 page)

“Then we should give you a proper name,” Aggie said. “You can’t be Scuff forever. You need a name to suit a young lady!”

“I shall never be that. Scuff does me very well.”

“Our girl with no name. Orphan Number 102, from the Capital.” She saw my face. “You need never go back, Scuff. You live here
now.” For a moment she looked wistful again. “If only Leah were here too.”

Jealousy pierced me suddenly. Whenever Aggie talked to me, Leah would somehow come into the conversation. Leah was the late
Master’s daughter, who had run away from Murkmere the night he died. She had left Aggie with the responsibility of managing
the estate. Nothing had been heard of Leah since she disappeared, almost three years ago.

I was glad when she went. I’d always thought her a spiteful, unkind girl; I was frightened of her too. I never understood
why Aggie cared for her so much.

Jethro had left in a spring shower, and now another came, a mist of drops too fine to wet us. We began to run the short distance
to the Hall. We’d not bothered with hats and cloaks earlier. Aggie was laughing and trying to cover her bright hair, which
always curled wild in the damp.

A shaft of weak sunlight pierced the mist and touched the house, and we were in a green world.

Murkmere. A safe world
.

So I thought, then.

Later, on the same day that Aggie and Scuff had struggled in vain to close the gates of Murkmere after Jethro’s departure,
three figures in traveling capes were riding purposefully along the Wasteland road toward the neighboring village. Occasionally
the wind would tweak aside a cape flap to reveal the dark gray uniform of the Militia beneath, with the distinctive emblem
of the Eagle on the jacket pocket.

The leader, a middle-aged man called Mather, with cropped iron-gray hair and cold eyes, was in the Eastern Edge on an important
mission, sent from the Capital by the Lord Protector. He had brought the two youths with him to gain experience. One was the
Lord Protector’s own son, Caleb Grouted. The other was Mather’s bodyguard, Chance.

Chance hunched further into his rain-spattered cape and glanced at Mather. Three years ago, in the Capital,
Mather had plucked him from the Highgallow Orphans’ Home as being likely material for the Militia. He never showed any emotion,
did Mather, yet Chance longed to impress him above everything, to see that stony face lighten with approval. Chance burned
to become more than a mere bodyguard: he wanted to be accepted as an officer—as one of Mather’s men in the Special Interrogation
Branch, of which Mather himself was chief. All Chance needed was the opportunity to prove himself to Mather, but so far it
hadn’t happened.

The Wasteland gleamed in the waning light as their horses shied and jittered on the stony road. All Chance could see on either
side were pools of still water, yellow-green sedge, wind-bent trees. All he could hear was the wind moaning about his head.
How he missed the Capital, with its maze of narrow streets and secret alleyways, its crowds and clamor!

A sudden clattering made his horse start so that he had difficulty in preventing it from bolting. If it hadn’t been for Mather’s
impatient eye looking around on him, he might have been glad to bolt himself. Eerie white shapes had suddenly risen with great
commotion from a pool close to the road. Swans. Chance recognized them from those he had seen on the ornamental lakes in the
Capital. He touched his free hand to his amulet, an iron locket at his neck, and tried to remember what it said about swans
in the
Table of Significance
.

Swans were an omen, he was sure of that.

As they neared the Lawman’s hut, which stood at the entrance to the village, Chance felt a thrill of anticipation. The Lawman
might well hold the information they needed to succeed in their mission; he knew Mather would not hesitate to prise it from
him if necessary.

The hut looked deserted, its watch panel shut fast. Clearly the Lawman was not expecting any strangers. Behind it, nondescript
cottages straggled away into the mist and rain. On a rough patch of enclosed land, sheep eyed them incuriously, then went
back to pulling at the tufty grass.

Mather dismounted and tethered his black horse to a broken fence. “Rouse him, Lieutenant,” he said curtly to Caleb Grouted.

A grin flickered over Caleb’s handsome face. Nipping down from his own horse, he went smartly over to the closed door of the
hut and rapped on it with his pistol.

“Open up, Lawman!” There was the sound of startled movement inside, something heavy knocked over, then a querulous, suspicious
voice. “Who is it?”

“Officers of the Special Interrogation Branch of the Militia!” shouted Caleb with relish.

There was a shocked silence on the other side of the door, then a bolt slid back. An older man stood blinking at them in fright.
Behind him Chance could see the Records table, with a bread roll and half-eaten piece of cheese lying on top; a tankard had
fallen on its side so that ale dripped darkly to the floor.

“Forgive me, good Sirs. We have so few travelers along this road…”

Mather moved smoothly forward. “It is always best to be on your guard, Lawman—to keep careful watch. No doubt you have heard
of the recent death of the rebel leader, Robert Fane?”

The Lawman nodded quickly, his rheumy eyes widening.

Mather came close, keeping his voice low yet heavy with menace, as he looked down on him. “The rebels may be quiet at the
moment, but soon they will appoint a new leader and gather their forces. The Lord Protector will want his loyal subjects to
be on their guard. His people look to their Lawmen for security—reassurance. It would be a shame if your retirement had to
come early.”

The Lawman wrung his hands together. “Forgive me…,” he began again, but Mather cut him short.

“I trust that in other areas you fulfill your duties. You keep the records of persons in this village, alive or dead?”

He looked up at the rolls of parchment stacked neatly along the shelves. “I see you do. I hope they are up to date.”

“Indeed they are, Sir,” said the Lawman tremulously, clutching the withered herb amulet at his neck.

“We need to go back five years. To the household of the Murkmere estate, as it was then—when the late Master of Murkmere was
still alive, before his daughter ran off.”

Caleb Grouted swaggered over to the shelves and stared up. “These arranged in date order, Lawman? They’d better be.”

The Lawman’s hand was trembling as he pulled down the
correct parchment. “There has been much coming and going at Murkmere since then, Sirs.”

“And, no doubt, you have recorded all of it,” Mather said grimly. He had picked up the Register of Visitors from the Records
table and was turning the heavy vellum pages to stare at the Lawman’s cramped writing. “We shall look at that roll first,
then we shall investigate the more recent records to see if our quarry has escaped us or is still there to be ensnared.”

Chance could see the glitter in Caleb’s eyes as they both crowded the Lawman, breathing hotly down his neck while he split
the sealing wax and spread the roll open on the Records table.

“What name should I look for, Sir?” The Lawman fumbled for his spectacles.

“Not a name.” said Mather. “This girl has no name. You are to look for a number.”

His business successfully completed, Mather strode to the door of the hut. Chance, about to follow Mather out, heard the Lawman
let out a moan. He glanced back.

Caleb was slapping his hand along the shelves. Carefully ordered rolls of records toppled down under the onslaught like a
house of cards; old parchment curled and cracked as it hit the floor, wax seals split open. As a final gesture, Caleb wrenched
a map from the wall. He glanced at it, then crushed it into his cape pocket as he trampled and kicked his way to the door.

Tears ran down the Lawman’s face. It had only taken the young officer a moment to ruin the work of centuries.

That’s Caleb Grouted
, thought Chance.
A quick worker
. He almost admired him.

Miss Jennet doesn’t love me.

To her, I am the little illiterate orphan girl from the Capital, someone to be saved by education. So she does what she considers
her duty by me, as former schoolmistress to the village. For the past three years she has taught me to read and write and
talk in proper grammar, and I’m truly grateful for it. She’s an excellent teacher. It’s strange that though she’s so impatient
in other things—desires the house clean and tidy and well run, and often raps our knuckles if it is not—in her teaching she
has infinite patience. She doesn’t teach Doggett: Doggett says she’ll stick with what she knows already; she’s fearful of
the blasphemy in book-learning.

I am a little frightened of Miss Jennet, but I long for her praise. Most of all I long for her love, but that is all for Aggie,
her niece.

All the same, by the evening of that spring day Miss Jennet was pleased to see the pots shining on the kitchen walls. “You’ve
done well, Scuff,” she said.

I smiled, and a little glow lit in my heart. A dog lying before the fire wagged his tail at the sound of her voice. They’ve
grown fat and soft with Aggie’s spoiling, the guard dogs of
Murkmere that were once so fierce and ready to eat any stranger.

“I think that your job is done for today, Scuff,” Miss Jennet said. “You can rest now.”

Rest! With vegetables to be picked from the kitchen garden before daylight faded, and water to be brought in from the pump
in the stable yard and heated, and supper to be cooked. Pease pottage tonight, and all that shelling!

Aunt Jennet was smiling, though: it was a little joke. She knew as well as I that there was no rest for anyone.

But then her smiled faded. She said, “I think I will take a little rest also,” and sat down at the table. Her face sagged
into little folds about her chin, so that she looked old. Miss Jennet is as thin as a whip and as brown as tanned hide, but
I don’t believe she is an elderly woman. She always refuses to do any less work than we do.

I brought her a cup of water. Her brown face was white. She raised the cup to her lips, then her hand drifted down, the cup
tilting, the water spilling; and she was suddenly crumpled on the flags at my feet.

I didn’t know what to do. I knelt down. I was trembling, for I remembered a dead woman in a cellar long ago. In the end I’d
had to go up into the street by myself, and that was when they’d caught me and put me in the Orphans’ Home.

But Miss Jennet opened her eyes, and I was safe in Murkmere again. “I’ve not eaten much today,” she murmured. “There hasn’t
been time. I was sorting… carrying… Don’t tell Aggie.”

“You must get to your bed,” I said in a fluster. “I’ll help you.”

To my surprise, she did not protest. She leaned on me, surprisingly heavy, and I helped her from the kitchen, upstairs to
her chamber, past all the closed doors of those rooms we no longer used. It was beginning to grow dark, and a wind was rising
outside; I lit a candle and closed the window.

“It’s chilly in here,” she said, shivering, as she climbed on her bed.

“I’ll light a fire,” I said.

“No, it’s too much bother. Bring me an extra coverlet from the linen cupboard. That will warm me.”

The cupboard was vast, lined with shelves that were piled high with sheets, quilts, old pillows, and scented with crumbling
sprays of dried lavender tied with wisps of silk. The linen was Doggett’s responsibility: she did the washing, ironing, and
darning. Her stitches were exquisite: she’d been lady’s maid to Miss Leah until Miss Leah had disappeared three years ago.
She was as eager for Miss Jennet’s good word as I was, and a jealous girl. I did not trust her, though Aggie did. Aggie still
called her by Leah’s name for her—Dog—though with Aggie it was said with affection. She is indeed like a little dog that will
nip you when you think you have made friends.

“What are you doing?” Doggett’s voice. Always there when not needed.

“Fetching a quilt for Miss Jennet.” I could feel my heart beating. It was so hard to stand up to Doggett. “She’s not well.”

“Not well?” I was surprised to see that Doggett looked
taken aback, shocked even, her little eyes darting here and there as if for reassurance. “I’ll go to her.”

“There’s no need. She’s comfortable, and sleeping now.”

“I’ll take her some supper later, then. Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen, preparin’ it?”

“I will be soon,” I said meekly, and I went.

When I delivered the quilt to Miss Jennet, she said, “You’re a good girl, Scuff.”

“Not good,” I said in a low voice, thinking of my secret crime and suddenly longing to tell it to Miss Jennet this very moment.

“Very good.” She smiled and stretched out her hand. I took it, the palm hard in mine but the fingers surprisingly, disconcertingly,
frail. I thought she must be ill indeed to be so soft with me. I left her shortly afterward, once I’d seen her lie back beneath
the warmth and close her eyes; and I hurried back along the passage, through the growing shadows to the back stairs, for I
didn’t want supper to be late.