Jimmy the Hand (32 page)

‘That’s
a dead lady,’ Kay said, whiter than ever.

Neesa whispered,
‘No. She’s not dead.’

‘But she’s
not moving,’ Rip said. ‘She’s not breathing.’

‘She’s
not dead,’ Neesa repeated. ‘She talks to me.’

‘We can’t
stay here!’ Rip sounded accusing and panicked.

The others
looked at him in surprise. Mandy said, ‘Where else can we go?’

Rip insisted.
‘We can’t stay here!’

Kay sat on a
chair nearest the door and said, ‘I can’t move.’

Neesa came and
put her hand on Rip’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right.
We’ll be safe here . . . for a little while.’

Rip didn’t
know what to say. He had no idea where else they could hide, so he
sat on the floor. He was tired and hungry and scared. Right now,
despite the lady in the other room, this place felt safer than any
place he had been since waking up.

Rip looked
around the room; there was a decanter on a table beside the bed and a
goblet. He went over to it and took a sniff. Wine. He wrinkled his
nose—he didn’t like wine unless it was well watered. But
he was thirsty enough not to really care. He poured himself a draught
and he took a swallow.

His eyes flew
open. It was good! It spread a fragrant warmth through his mouth and
down his throat all the way to his belly. From there it sped to warm
his skin. He looked uncertainly at Neesa, then decided that she
wouldn’t be harmed by just a little. No doubt she was as
thirsty as he’d been.

‘Let’s
eat,’ he said. Then bringing the decanter and cup with him, he
sat down in the middle of the floor.

Mandy licked her
lips, then nodded and fetched out the bread and cheese from her
pillowcase. Neesa gnawed a chunk off the loaf with a look of fierce
concentration that almost made Rip laugh.

‘We can’t
eat here!’ Kay said, barely containing his whisper. ‘There’s
a dead woman in there. We’ll die!’

Mandy snorted.
She took the loaf from Neesa and broke herself off a piece. ‘We
will not!’ she said. ‘That’s the stupidest thing
I’ve ever heard. You always eat when someone dies. Gran died,
and we all ate these pastries and things; even Mother, and she was
crying.’

‘Drink
this,’ Rip said and offered Kay a goblet of the wine.

Kay recoiled,
his face full of disgust. ‘I’m not going to drink that!
It’s probably poisoned.’

Rip rolled his
eyes. ‘It’s not poisoned. I just drank some, do I look
like I’ve been poisoned?’

‘Besides,’
Mandy said, offering Kay a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese, ‘who
would keep poison on their night table?’

‘I’ll
take some!’ Neesa said, reaching out for the goblet.

Rip gave it to
her. After she swallowed three times, Mandy forced her hand down and
said, ‘Just another sip. Can’t have you passing out on
us.’ Rip nodded. Like any farm-boy, he had witnessed the
effects of too much wine on his father and the other men in the area
during festivals and he knew it wouldn’t take much to get the
small girl completely drunk.

Neesa seemed on
the verge of complaint when Rip pulled the cup away, but kept her
objections to herself. Kay reached, shamefaced, for the goblet.

‘Wait your
turn,’ Mandy said and took it for herself.

Kay gave her a
weak smile and backed off. He went to the window and looked out.
‘Could we get down from here if we knotted the sheets
together?’ he asked.

Rip went over
and looked out of the window. It was a sheer drop of perhaps forty
feet onto a flagstone courtyard. He just looked at Kay and walked
back to the others.

Kay turned from
the window, pouting, and slid down the wall to sit in a crouch and
eat his bread. After a moment, he began to sob, then to cry in
earnest. He made a sad and unattractive sight, his face bright red,
his mouth wide open, revealing half-chewed gobbets of bread.

Rip and Mandy
looked at one another uncomfortably, uncertain how to react. This was
so unlike Kay, who would have laughed unmercifully if one of them had
broken down so completely. Neesa looked at Kay for a moment, then
pushed herself up from the floor and went over to pat him on the
shoulder. ‘Don’t be sad,’ she said.

After a moment
Kay looked up at Rip, tears pouring down his face. ‘I’m
sorry,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘I’m sorry. But
I am so scared.’ He leaned over, putting his cheek against
Neesa’s head, and continued to weep.

Neesa frowned,
then put her hand up to the top of her head. ‘You’re
getting my hair wet,’ she accused.

‘Sorry,’
Kay said and lifted his head. He got his crying under control.

‘We’re
all scared,’ Rip assured him. ‘I don’t like saying
it, but I am.’

‘But what
are we going to do?’ Kay asked, tears threatening to break
loose again. He pointed to the inner door. ‘There’s a
dead woman behind there.’ Then he pointed to the outer door,
‘And there’s a ghost in the hall. We can’t get out
of the window. What are we going to do?’

Mandy pushed the
goblet at him before he could go off again. ‘Drink,’ she
said with ferocious emphasis. Kay did so and it seemed to help.

Rip stared
glumly at the opposite wall. It was decorated with a carving of a
plant in an urn. It was very elaborate, with all kinds of curlicues,
not very pretty, but well done. As he stared, it seemed to him that
something was wrong with that wall. From the way it projected into
the room there should be a closet in it, but there wasn’t. And
now that he thought about it, the wall in the corridor was straight
and smooth. So why was the wall on the inside bent like that?
Can
it be a secret passage like King Akter used to escape the wicked
uncle?
he thought.

Suddenly Neesa
said, ‘Yes!’ She stood and walked right to where Rip was
looking, and went to the wall as if hypnotized and began pressing
every berry and flower centre, tracing every curve of every frond,
looking for something that might press in.

He hadn’t
been too sure just what a secret passage was or how it worked when
Emmet had told him the story, but he hadn’t seen a real castle
then. They were so big. Could he actually be looking at one right
now?

‘What are
you doing?’ Mandy asked.

Neesa pressed
one last projection. It sank beneath her finger and something
clicked. The wall swung open with a soft creak. Rip approached and
stared at it breathlessly for a long moment then Kay and Mandy came
to stand beside him.

‘Open it,’
Kay said, looking pale and dazed.

Rip did. The
opening revealed a set of steps leading into pitch blackness.

‘Dark,’
Neesa said, taking hold of Mandy’s hand.

‘We’ll
need candles,’ Mandy said, ever practical. ‘There’s
some in that woman’s room . . .’

‘No!’
Kay said and grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t go in there!’

Rip silently
agreed.

‘Well what
are we supposed to do?’ she demanded. ‘If we take that
one,’ she pointed to the night table, ‘they’ll know
someone was here.’

‘They’ll
know someone was here anyway,’ Rip said. ‘We drank most
of the wine, remember?’

‘But if we
take the candle they might guess we went this way.’ Mandy’s
face had a stubborn look.

‘They
won’t know!’ insisted Rip. ‘They’d have to
find the passage like Neesa did.’ Then he looked at Neesa. ‘I
was thinking about a passage, from a story my pa told me. How did you
know?’

‘I
didn’t,’ answered Neesa. ‘She told me.’ With
a nod of her head she indicated the next room.

Rip couldn’t
repress a shudder. ‘Look, they might think we were here, but
they’ll think we left by the door.’ He marched over and
unlocked it, suddenly certain that whatever had tried to follow them
into the room was not there. He didn’t know why he knew, just
that it felt right. ‘So, they’ll look all over the place,
and even if they come back and find this passage, we’ll have
been gone a long time,’ Rip explained.

He went to the
night table, checked the bedside drawer and found two more candles
and a striker. Handing one to Mandy, he stuffed the other into his
shirt, then lit the one in her hand and took it from her. They were
very good candles—wax, not tallow dips—Ma had three like
them for special times. Then he put the striker in his shirt next to
the other candle.

He and Mandy
looked at one another for a long moment, then Mandy’s eyes
flickered toward the corridor. She took a deep breath. ‘You go
first,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’

Rip took a deep
breath to steady himself and hoped it didn’t show. He was
afraid of that dark hole between the walls too. But since they had no
other way to go he supposed they might as well get it over with.

A timid knock on
the door of Lyman Malachy’s laboratory brought his head up from
his work table. A glance at the Baron who sat beside him was met with
a frown.

‘Come in,’
Malachy said. He wiped his hands and stepped toward the door. The
Baron rose from his chair and put aside his book.

A very nervous
and greasy-looking mercenary opened the door and advanced a half pace
into the room. His posture was absurdly deferential.

‘Sorry to
interrupt yer worships,’ the man said, bobbing in an almost
continuous bow, eyes flickering to the geometric shapes on parchments
pinned to the walls, to things chalked on the floor, to books and
instruments.

‘The, uh,
the children . . .’

Lyman closed his
eyes; he’d known it was going to be bad, but if something had
happened to those children heads would roll. ‘Ye-sss?’ he
said aloud.

‘They’ve,
uh, the little brats have escaped, yer worships.’

The Baron
shifted his stance and Lyman knew without looking that he was giving
the messenger a look that might cause a strong man to faint. This
fool was not a strong man. The wizard moved to defuse the situation.

‘You mean
they’re out of their room,’ Lyman said calmly. ‘In
point of fact they cannot get out of the house.’ Speaking over
his shoulder to the Baron he said, ‘I’ve made
arrangements.’ He turned back to the mercenary. ‘So
they’ll be somewhere in the house.’ Flicking his hand in
a gesture of dismissal he said, ‘Go and find them. And, mind
you don’t harm them. I very much doubt you’d like the
consequences if you so much as scratch one of them. Do you
understand?’

The man nodded
and backed out, bowing, pulling the door closed after him.

Lyman shrugged.
‘Damned nuisance!’

Bernarr frowned.
‘Indeed,’ he said coldly. He sat down again. ‘Why
do you have so many at one time? We won’t need another one for
at least a week.’

The wizard bit
his lips and looked thoughtfully at the Baron. Then he went over and
pulled a chair close to the one in which Bernarr was sitting. ‘I’ve
been collecting them for several reasons,’ he admitted. ‘One,
it’s not that easy to find a child born on the day your lady .
. . entered her present state. And though the spell we found to
extend her life by using the life-energy of these children has at
least kept her condition from deteriorating, well,’ he extended
his hands palms up and shrugged, ‘it hasn’t improved it
at all.’

‘I thought
that I saw something the last time,’ Bernarr said. He stared
into the distance as though remembering. ‘A twitch of her
mouth, and a finger, I’m sure I saw one finger move, ever so
slightly.’

‘Mmm, mm,
yes, just possibly,’ Lyman agreed. ‘But we need more,
much more, my lord. After all, our goal is to free her completely, is
it not?’

Bernarr’s
eyes shifted toward the wizard and narrowed. ‘What is in your
mind?’ he asked in a slow, quiet voice.

Lyman rubbed his
hands excitedly. ‘The very book that you’re reading gave
me the idea,’ he said. ‘If we can raise a life-force
powerful enough we may well succeed in curing and waking your lady.’

Furious, the
Baron lunged forward, grasping the front of the wizard’s robe
in his gnarled hand. ‘Why have you not told me this before?’

‘Because I
did not know about it,’ Lyman said with a sick smile. ‘We
only just acquired that book, you know.’

The Baron let
him go and leaned back in his chair. ‘Show me!’

Nervously, the
wizard took the book, sped through the pages and presented it to the
Baron once he’d found what he was looking for.

Bernarr studied
the text, frowning over the curious antique phrasing. Then his
eyebrows rose and his mouth opened.

‘Seven
times seven,’ the wizard babbled. ‘A mystical number, you
see.’

‘Forty-nine?’
Bernarr said in disbelief. ‘Forty-nine! Are you mad? Why not
nine times nine? That, too, is a mystical number.’

‘Unnecessary,’
Lyman said with a wave of his hand. ‘The effect isn’t
increased if the number of sacrifices is larger.’

‘It
sickens me to murder these children one at a time!’ the Baron
exclaimed. ‘But . . . forty-nine? We will be awash in blood.’

‘What I
think will increase the effect,’ Lyman said as if he hadn’t
heard the Baron’s objections, ‘is to sacrifice them all
at once.’

Bernarr stared
at him. ‘Forty-nine at once? Is that what you said?’

‘Yes. You
see we’ll create a means to collect all the life-force at once
and direct it to your lady. Such a large jolt is sure to do the
trick.’

‘Are you
suggesting that we recruit forty-seven helpers in such a bloody act?’
Bernarr looked at him warily, as though uncertain about the wizard’s
sanity.

‘Gods
forbid!’ Lyman exclaimed. ‘No, no, that wouldn’t do
at all. The blow must be struck absolutely simultaneously in all
forty-nine cases. One could never co-ordinate that, even if your
helpers practised for weeks.’

Interested in
spite of his disgust, the Baron asked, ‘Then how do you propose
to accomplish such a thing?’

‘I’ve
designed a machine.’ The wizard jumped to his feet and went to
the work table. He returned with a roll of parchment and spread it on
his knees. ‘You see,’ he indicated several points on the
drawing, ‘when the original blow is struck all the other knives
descend as well.’