Murkmere (3 page)

“But why, Sir?”

It must have burst out as a wail. He turned and considered me in silence for a moment, his dark head cocked, so that his hair
fell forward in a gleaming curve. “You like books, Miss Agnes?”

“Oh, yes, Sir!” I couldn’t help adding, “I’m the best reader in the village.” Aunt Jennet had seen to that.

“Quite the scholar, then.” I feared he made fun of me, but his expression was serious. “You know the Divine Questions and
the Responses?”

“Of course, Sir. We’re taught them in school.”

“Name for me the Birds of Light, Agnes.”

I flushed. Because I came from the village did he think me so ignorant that he had to ask the most fundamental of questions?
“Robin, Wren, Swallow, Martin, Lark, Sir,” I said stiffly. “They are the sacred ones, the five protectors of men, the guardians
of light.”

“I only ask because I like to be assured that my household is devout, Agnes,” he said gently. “And the Birds of Night?”

“Crow, Raven, Jackdaw, Magpie, Owl,” I whispered, and felt for my amber. “Don’t ask me what they do, Sir. I can’t speak it
in this room. I’ve been well taught, you needn’t fear.”

His eyes watched my searching hand. “I’m sure of it, Agnes.” He turned away to warm himself at the fire. “That’s why I know
you wouldn’t like the Master’s books.”

My head was full of questions, but I didn’t dare ask them. “Where are the books now, Sir?” I ventured at last.

“Mr. Tunstall has made a bookroom in the old watchtower outside. It suits him well enough. He tutors Miss Leah there each
day now.” He crooked a long finger. “Come and warm yourself, Agnes. It will take time before the Master joins us. As you’ve
seen, the passages are long in Murkmere Hall.”

I trod carefully to avoid snagging the rugs. “Could you tell me about Miss Leah, Sir?”

“You know she was a foundling, left here at the gates as a baby?”

I nodded.

“The Master took her in out of the kindness of his heart and made her his ward. A generous act, since he’s childless. It means
she’ll have the good fortune to inherit his estate one day.” His tone was oblique, so that I couldn’t tell what he thought.

“I meant — what is she like, Sir?”

“A girl now, grown to much your age, I’d say.” He was teasing me, his voice amused. His dark gaze slipped over me as I stood
by him at the fireside. “She’s taller than you but not so well formed.”

I lowered my eyes, shyly. I’d never had a compliment before, and was unsure whether this was one. He was standing so close
to me that I could smell the flower water he must
bathe in, the dark, sweet fragrance of flowers at dusk, intensified by the warmth of the fire. I’d never smelt a man so clean,
so fastidiously clean, so exotically scented.

“You have hair the same color as your mother’s,” he said softly. “You shouldn’t be named Agnes at all, but for a bright little
marigold, its petals opening with the sun.”

Curling tendrils had sprung loose from my braids and I touched them wonderingly.

“Do you think you could do something for me, Agnes?” he said after a moment. “I’d like you to watch Leah and tell me anything
that’s strange in her behavior.”

“Strange, Sir?”

At once I thought that Jethro and the village gossips must be right. The birds had flown away with Miss Leah’s wits.

“I mean report anything odd that takes place. Stay with her. It will be your duty, anyway, as her companion.” Silas Seed smiled
ruefully. “Perhaps you’ll be better at it than her maid, Doggett. If you have anything to tell me, you can find me in the
steward’s room. It’s the Master’s order, you understand, that no harm should befall his ward. After all, she’ll inherit Murkmere
one day.”

“I understand,” I said eagerly. “I’ll do my best to protect her, Sir.”

“Good girl.” He said nothing more but gazed into the fire, frowning slightly.

I drew back, and shifted my weight from right leg to left and back again. I didn’t like to ask more about Miss Leah. From
his expression I thought he must be bored with having
to wait about with a village girl, with only fifteen years to her, however bright her hair.

I was listening to the quiet crackle of logs in the grate and trying not to fidget, when I heard an extraordinary sound: a
harsh, vibrant grinding as if every scythe on the estate were being sharpened at the same time. It was coming along the passage
behind the closed door and growing louder. My hand flew to my mouth. For a moment I thought the floor, the very earth beneath
it, was splitting apart.

Silas Seed went to the door and opened it, and something came rolling in.

I saw the great grinding iron wheels first, then the iron bars that caged the man inside, who stared between them like a creature
confined. I saw the huge head, the massive shoulders. He’d been a big man before the accident, but now he had scarcely any
legs at all. The powerful torso that sat so solidly on the seat of the wheelchair dwindled into little withered things that
dangled above the floor. The shrunken feet were shod in boots a child might have worn.

In the village I’d seen bodies maimed by farming accidents and disease. I wasn’t frightened of the Master’s appearance. I
stood quietly, caught in admiration of the way he maneuverd the chair across the room, using only the strength of his hands
and arms. I heard Silas Seed say, “Miss Agnes Cotter, Mr. Tunstall,” and remembered just in time to bob a curtsy.

The Master beckoned me closer.

I saw, looking down at his face, that he wasn’t an old man as I’d expected, but of middle years, with a high color in his
cheeks, and thick, dark hair, untouched by gray, tied back into a queue.

But there was something wounded about him that had nothing to do with his ravaged legs. His face was bitter, with a down-turned
mouth, compressed and angry with the burden of pain. As I tried not to stare at the dreadful chair, I wondered why he’d allowed
himself to be bound by straps of iron.

“Kneel,” whispered Silas Seed. “You’re at his level then.”

I knelt, and the Master and I regarded each other. I felt a flush rise to my cheeks: I was unkempt, untidy, my hair awry.

But there was a lift to the Master’s tight mouth. “You are as I expected, Agnes,” he said. “Am I as you expected, I wonder?”

I shook my head, unsure how to answer.

“Surely they tell of the monster of Murkmere in the village?”

“I think — I think if they saw you as I do, they would pity you, Sir!” I stammered.

At that he turned his head away from me sharply, his voice full of contempt. “I don’t deserve pity, Agnes Cotter.”

I was appalled to have offended him. He’d surely send me away now. But after a dreadful silence during which I stared miserably
at the dust in the cracks of the floorboards, he said more calmly, “Your mother had a soft heart too, Agnes. She was a loyal,
brave girl, as I’m sure you are. She was very special to us — my late wife and me.”

I nodded, heartily relieved but not trusting myself to speak again, though I longed to ask him more.

“It was another lifetime,” he said, and his expression was sad for a moment. Then he stirred himself.

“And now Eliza’s daughter is to be companion to my ward, Leah. You’ll have your meals with her, walk with her, converse with
her. She’s your age or thereabouts, but a child still. She’s lived here at Murkmere all her life. I’ve no children, as you
know, so she’s had a lonely upbringing.”

He sat forward a little, against the bars of the chair, and his powerful hands tightened on the arms.

“On my death she’ll inherit Murkmere and take my place in the Ministration, yet she knows nothing of ordinary life. It’s high
time she met a girl her own age.” He studied me with a half-smile. “Daughter to Eliza and niece to a schoolmistress, eh?”

“My aunt’s Chief Elder of the village as well, Sir,” I said proudly, and I glanced over to see if Mr. Silas had heard.

The Master raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? Then I can’t think anyone could be more suitable as my ward’s companion.”

“I’m happy you sent for me, Sir,” I said politely, thinking I should respond.

Now the half-smile was a curl of the lip, no more. “Happy? I hope you remain so.” Then he nodded curtly at the steward, who
went over to the bureau and opened it, beckoning me over.

I rose to my feet, puzzled. Silas Seed took out a new-looking roll of pale cream parchment, which he spread open. Inside it
was covered with black handwriting and he pointed to the only clear space, at the bottom.

“Sign here, please, Agnes.”

Looking over and seeing my bewilderment, the Master said with a touch of impatience, “It’s the contract of your employment.
It sets out the agreement between us both. Silas will sign on my behalf.” He wheeled his chair to the window and remained
there, looking out at the gray afternoon, his back turned to us.

Silas Seed dipped a quill pen into the glass inkpot and offered it to me, his dark eyes steady on mine.
I would show him the fine hand I wrote in
, I thought,
prove that I really was a scholar;
and I quickly signed my name with a flourish.

Mr. Silas signed his own name, and wrote “for Gilbert Tunstall” beneath it, and then the date. He was left-handed and wrote
surprisingly laboriously for a steward. He sprinkled sand over the wet signatures to blot them, and glanced quickly at the
Master’s back as if to reassure him it was done before lighting the little wax-burner.

I watched the tiny flame glow, then the swift movement of his fingers as he rolled the contract up again and dripped hot sealing
wax on the overlap. The silver seal came down on the shining, dark red globule and the sharp outline of the Eagle appeared
suddenly, wings outstretched for flight.

The Eagle was the emblem of the Ministration. With a thrill of awe, I remembered that now I’d be working for one of its members.

There was a knock at the door, and the little maid who had served me in the kitchen shuffled in hesitantly at Mr. Silas’s
“Enter.” She dipped a bob to the Master’s back and twisted her apron. “Please, Sir, Mistress Crumplin has sent me to take
Miss Agnes to her room, if your business with her is done, Sir.”

Silas Seed nodded; the Master of Murkmere appeared lost in his own thoughts. We left the men silent in the empty room and
set off along the shadowy passages together.

“What’s your name?” I asked her cheerfully, relieved my interview was over so soon.

She looked astonished that I should want to know. I saw that her cheeks were smudged with soot and tear stains. “They call
me Scuff here, Miss,” she whispered. “I don’t know my real name.”

“You don’t come from the Eastern Edge, do you?”

“Oh, no, Miss. From the Capital, like all of us at Murkmere.”

I’d hoped to meet a friendly face from the village some-where in the vastness of the house, and was disappointed. But I wouldn’t
let my spirits sink.

“So, how did you come to work here, Scuff?” I asked curiously, for the Capital was several days’ journey south.

“He came to the Orphans’ Home a while back, Mr. Silas did.” I had to bend down to hear her. “He was lookin’ for likely maidservants.
I was cheap, bein’ so small, so he bought me. We only had numbers there, no names.” With a sudden burst of confidence she
pulled up her sleeve and showed me the number branded on her narrow forearm: 102, now a faded scar.

Pity stirred inside me. “So you’re an orphan like me,” I said. Scuff looked up at me, and a surprised smile brightened her
pinched face.

When we found the bedchamber at last, she insisted on lighting the fire in the small grate for me. The room was even colder
than the passages, and fusty, as if no one had slept in it for a long while. Then she offered to unpack my bundle, which had
been put on the bed with my cloak.

I laughed, and she looked almost shocked at the sound. “It’s most kind of you, but I couldn’t possibly sit by while you did
it. Tell me one thing instead, Scuff.”

“Yes, Miss Agnes?”

“Aggie is quite enough, but tell me — why has the Master imprisoned himself in his chair in that way?”

She looked more pinched still, and her eyes grew frightened. “I don’t know, but we shouldn’t speak of it, Miss Aggie!”

“Why ever not?”

But I’d lost her confidence. She looked helplessly at me, hesitated, then almost tripped over her big shoes in her haste to
leave the room.

I wandered around after she’d left, gazing at the furniture: the bedside table on which sat a porcelain candleholder, the
washstand and blue-patterned bowl, the pair of stuffed chairs covered with crimson-striped satin, the walnut dressing table.
I caught sight of my face in the looking glass and saw my round eyes. There were yellow silk curtains at the windows, and
matching curtains hanging around the bed, while
under it sat the grandest chamber pot I’d ever seen, made of flowered china with a copper lid. I thought of the straw pallet
I shared with my aunt back at the cottage, in the cramped room under the eaves. If only Aunt Jennet could share all this with
me!

But I was alone.

I unpacked my old skirt and bodice, my two shifts, my slippers. I put them at one lonely end of the big mahogany wardrobe.
I went over to the window and stood looking out without seeing. I wondered what to do next.

Without thinking, I’d pulled my amulet from my bodice. It had come down to my mother through ancestors who’d lived on the
coast. As I held the amber stone, I imagined the gray seas that had shaped it before finally throwing it up onto the shingle
beaches of the Eastern Edge. I’d never seen the sea, though it was only a morning’s walk away. Inlanders didn’t approve of
the coast people; they weren’t devout nowadays, so I’d heard. But the amber was good protection against the Night Birds, the
very strongest.

I opened the window and leaned out. The room was at the back of the house, overlooking the stable yard; beyond the stables
I could see a coach house, dairies, the old leaning walls of a kitchen garden. I was looking for the watch-tower where the
Master kept his books, but couldn’t see it, only scrubby meadows stretching into the misty distance, their flatness broken
by sheep pens and cowsheds and workers’ cottages.