Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (21 page)

‘And no more are the Cattermunes,’ Mondragon suggested again. ‘Are they?’

‘I’d never thought of it,’ said the large-bellied man, shaking his head in amazement. ‘Isn’t that strange. I remember arriving here among them, with Mary Ann and Mrs Smani, but until this moment, I never considered where here was or what they were. How very strange.’

‘Your real name is Aghrehond,’ said Mondragon. ‘My real name is Makr Avehl. Mary Ann’s name is, indeed, Marianne, and Mrs Smani is Dagma Zahmani, Marianne’s great-aunt. Does any of that mean anything at all to you?’

Green-Aghrehond’s face wrinkled in concentration. ‘I have no sense of disbelief,’ he said at last. ‘Though nothing going on in my head at this moment confirms that what you say is true.’

‘Damn,’ said Mondragon-Makr Avehl. ‘And I suppose Marianne will know no more than you?’

‘I consider it unlikely, sir.’

‘Please, don’t sir me. Simply be quiet for a moment and let me think.’ Which Mondragon did, furiously, considering alternatives of action. Suspicion had already been aroused. He could not wait any longer to act. ‘Can you take me to Marianne? Or, better yet, can you bring her and Mrs Smani here?’

Green shook his head worriedly. ‘They’re in the nursery. It’s another wing of the house altogether. There are ways through the walls, but I don’t know how to get there from here and there’s no one I could ask. Fanetta knows the way, of course. She may be in the kitchen this time of night, and I do know the way to the kitchen. Come to think of it, I’ve seen the entrance from the kitchen that they use when they return to the nursery. Perhaps I could find my way from there.’

There would be no reason for a guest to go to the kitchens, would there?’

‘You could be a footman. A new footman. They come and go all the time. With most of the Cattermunes still at dinner, we might make it if we hurry.’

‘We would need the livery.’

‘That Sneeth is about your size.’

‘True. And did offer his services.’

Mondragon turned to the bellpull, and when a maid tapped at his door a moment later, he asked her to find Sneeth. Green was, meantime, busy tearing up pillow cases.

Sneeth arrived with suspicious promptness. He was indeed about Mondragon’s size, though less robust. Still, in a pinch, the clothing would do. Green sat upon him while Mondragon gagged him, stripped him of his livery, tied him securely, and deposited him in the wardrobe. When Mondragon put the clothing on, Sneeth’s inhumanness became even more apparent. The proportions of the trousers and coat were subtly wrong, and Mondragon found himself walking in a high-crotched spidery sidle that was totally unlike his usual stride.

They went down a back staircase and through a network of hallways, standing aside, politely heads down, whenever any of the upper servants came by. There was another staircase, narrower halls, then a doorway opening into a shabby, low-ceilinged room with long tables and battered chairs. ‘The staff dining room,’ said Green, eyes darting from side to side. Except for a huge woman who was loudly slurping soup at one of the tables, the room was empty.

‘She’s not here?’ murmured Mondragon. The woman at the table could not be the Fanetta he had seen through his glasses. ‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Green in return. ‘I’ve never seen her before. As I said, they come and go. Sometimes one doesn’t see the same faces twice!’

‘Where’s the door you mentioned?’

‘Out along the kitchen wall, in a little side corridor.’

‘We’d be noticed if we went now.’ It was true. The kitchen was having a momentary hiatus. The next course stood upon a side table, ready to go up. Washers were scrubbing pans in desultory fashion. Chief cooks sat on high stools, chatting together. ‘Wait until the next course leaves the kitchen, and we’ll try it then.’

Mondragon sat down, leaning casually on the table while Green fetched two cups of tea from the buffet. The large woman fixed them with an incredulous stare and sniffed audibly before saying, ‘You are on your legitimate break time, I presume.’

Mondragon gave her a haughty look. ‘Who are you, madam?’

‘I am the Cattermune nanny. And you?’

‘Green, ma’am. And Sneeth. Yes, ma’am. On our break. We’ll be only a few moments.’

As they sipped the tepid tea, a burst of noise came from the kitchen, cries of disbelief, the crash of broken crockery. The nanny darted to the door with Mondragon and Green close behind. ‘It’s true,’ an under-butler was exclaiming. ‘I was in the dining room when the immigration manager came to tell the Cattermune! There’ve been no immigrants for some time.’

‘What does it mean?’ cried a cook, his high, puffy hat flopping to and fro as he twisted his head about, seeking information. ‘That there have been no immigrants?’

‘There’s talk the anchor has come loose,’ the under-butler mumbled, casting a hasty look behind him as though afraid to be heard uttering this heresy. ‘That The Connection is broken.’

‘Surely not?’

‘It couldn’t be!’

‘The Cattermune put it there personally.’

‘I thought it was permanently in place.’

‘Not until midnight tonight. Midnight it would have been permanent. If it had still been there.’

‘The Cattermune will be furious.’

‘They’ll be binkering everyone …’

‘Now,’ whispered Mondragon. ‘In all the confusion.’ He followed Green along the wall of the kitchen and into the side corridor. A little door opened upon darkness and they slipped within, though not before Mondragon cast a look behind him to find the Cattermune nanny staring after them, her mouth half open.

‘Hurry,’ cried Mondragon. ‘The nanny saw us.’

‘I am hurrying, sir, but it’s pitch-dark in here.’

‘I had thought it might be,’ said Mondragon, taking a flashlight from his pocket. ‘I seem to have come very well prepared. Ellat’s doing, no doubt. Or Therat’s. I have no doubt that if we needed an inflatable boat or a pair of trained yaks, we would find them in the luggage. Which way?’

‘I haven’t the slightest notion,’ said Green, peering at the stairs that split into three before him.

‘Hello?’ came a tentative hail from above. ‘Who’s down there?’

‘Fanetta?’ cried Green. ‘Is that you?’

‘Green? Who’s with you?’

‘Somebody who wants to see Mary Ann.’

‘She’s here, with me. So’s Mrs Smani.’

‘Thank whatever,’ said Mondragon, climbing steadily toward the voice. He found the three women huddled on a narrow landing.

‘Have you heard?’ begged Fanetta. ‘One of the maids came to tell me. The Cattermune will be furious. He’ll be making binkers right and left. I told Mary Ann we had to get out of the nursery and hide.’

‘The nanny saw us come in here,’ said Mondragon.

‘Oh, by the Galosh’s pet plaice! We’ll have to get off these stairs or she’ll find us sure. Come along after me,’ and Fanetta dashed off down a winding mouse tunnel, so narrow and low that Mondragon had to stoop and Green grunted as he squeezed himself around and through the corners and turns. They climbed, descended, then made several turns to arrive at last in a small roomlike space with a bench along one wall.

‘Be very quiet,’ murmured Fanetta. ‘We’re just outside the dining room.’

‘Is there a hole?’ whispered Mondragon. ‘We need to know what’s going on.’

Laying her fingers across her lips, Fanetta held her candle to the wall to disclose two eyeholes with a shutter latch to one side. ‘Slide that and they’ll open,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be looking right out of the eyes of the portrait of Gormdab Cattermune.’

He slid the latch to one side. Dim light came through the two holes before he pressed his eyes to them and peered down into the dining room he had left less than an hour before. No one seemed to be present except Cattermunes. Some stood on chairs, yowling. Others scratched the walls in a fury, leaving long claw marks in the silk brocade.

‘How!’ howled the Cattermune. ‘I ask you, how?’

The person of whom this question was asked was the gray-haired Cattermune that Mondragon had seen in the entry hall. He had a long, lugubrious face and a large, bumpy head which he shook slowly from side to side. ‘I don’t know and it isn’t my doing and not my fault. I’ve said and I’ve said. Nobody came through for a long time, and I thought it was just – oh, maybe a war or something happening there to keep them from playing the game, you know. Not that it would stop them for long. But then, time went on and nobody came, so I ran a test on The Connection. Closed. Shut tight. No way through. They couldn’t get into the game if they tried.’

‘With the anchor in the World Outside, it couldn’t happen!’ screamed the Cattermune.

‘Then the anchor isn’t there anymore, and that’s all there is to it,’ said the lugubrious one.

Mondragon slid the shutter closed and turned to Marianne. ‘Marianne, my dearest, did you bring anything with you when you came?’

‘Dearest?’ she faltered. ‘Have we met?’

‘Damn,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I am Mondr – I am Makr Avehl, your husband. You are Marianne, my wife. This lady is Dagma Zahmani, your great-aunt. And we desperately need to know if you brought anything with you when you came.’

‘She wouldn’t remember,’ said Fanetta. ‘None of us do. I don’t know how you do, but none of us do. Except for me, of course, but that was just once.’

‘Ah.’ Mondragon ground his teeth together. ‘Tell me about the once, dear girl. How did you manage it?’

‘Old Groff has a rememberer,’ she said. ‘I sneaked it once and used it on me.’

‘And where is Old Groff now?’

‘In the butler’s pantry. Listening to what’s going on in the dining room.’

‘And his rememberer is where?’

‘In his room.’

‘And, lovely maiden, can you get us there?’

She stared at him, mouth open, then nodded slowly. ‘You’re something else, aren’t you? Something different from these other ones.’

‘I do hope so, maiden, since the situation desperately calls for something of the kind. Lead the way.’

As they went, they heard a consternation of sound off in the wallways, a bellowing and cursing, a sound of hammering. ‘They’re looking for us,’ whispered Fanetta. ‘They’ll never find us. Not in a million years.’

‘We don’t have a million years,’ suggested Mondragon. ‘Quickly, girl. Find this thing you mentioned.’

She found Groff’s room with only a few false trails. The room did not yield the thing she called the rememberer, however.

‘What did it look like?’ begged Green.

‘Was it bigger than a breadbox?’ asked Mrs Smani.

‘Could he have put it elsewhere?’ asked Mondragon.

‘It looks like a hat. It isn’t bigger than a breadbox. He could have put it anywhere, but why would he?’

‘Look for a hat,’ said Mondragon. ‘Spread out.’

The closet was stripped, the wardrobe laid bare. Every drawer was pulled out and emptied. At last, to the accompaniment of furious noise in the corridor outside, Mary Ann looked up at the chandelier and cried out, ‘There!’

It was hanging on an iron branch, obviously tossed there in a moment of carelessness. Green lifted Mondragon, and he fished the thing down. It did look like a very curious hat. ‘Now’ – he thrust them back toward the open panel through which they had entered the room – ‘Get back into hiding!’

They were no sooner behind the wall than they heard the door to the room they had left banged open and a huge voice shouting. ‘Groff! Groff! Where is that fool?’

‘How does it work?’ asked Mondragon, retreating down the hidden corridor.

‘Just put it on. You’ll remember.’

‘Not me, her,’ he said, fitting the hat onto Marianne’s head. ‘Darling? Sweetheart? Did you bring anything in here with you?’

‘Makr Avehl,’ she cried, breaking into tears. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here.’

There was a rustle of patting and hugging and tear drying while the others tried to look elsewhere. ‘Dear one, please. Concentrate. Did you bring anything in here with you?’

‘I …’ she said. ‘We … Let me think. I did. Yes. Of course I did. I brought – ah, what was it. The matchbox. I brought the matchbox!’ She fished in the pocket of her uniform and brought it out for them all to see. ‘This matchbox!’

‘Ah!’ He took it, turned it in his hands, shut his eyes and felt of it. ‘Yes. Well. So that’s why no one can come into the game anymore. Clever girl. You’ve broken his Connection. Not that he can’t restore it, if he gets his hands on this, though I imagine it would take another generation to make it permanent. Well. We must make sure he doesn’t. We really must think of a way to get out of here! Nothing obvious.’

Fanetta burbled, ‘They’ll never find us. We can stay right here until the whole thing blows over. I’ve done it. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Late at night we can steal food from the kitchen. It’s easy. I’ve done it.’

‘My dear young woman,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Believe me. If we stay anywhere within reach, they will find us. If they have to tear Cattermune’s House down stone by stone, they will find us. I know that as surely as I know my own name.’ He kissed Marianne again, removing the rememberer from her head and setting it firmly upon Green-Aghrehond’s. ‘The only chance we have is to take this thing somewhere else – somewhere where the Cattermune quite simply will not think to look!’