The Custodian of Marvels (10 page)

One by one, lamps were lit at the front of the house, though the servants’ windows remained dark. In the twilight I could just make out workers trudging towards their homes across the fields. As night took hold, a bank of cloud began rolling in from the west, blotting out the stars and then the moon. Nature was conspiring to help me in my endeavour, as if it wanted me to succeed.

It came to me that the numbness I had been feeling was a kind of peace. It had begun as a lack of physical sensation, but had grown into an unaccustomed stillness of thought.

I took my father’s pistol from the haversack and turned it in my hand. I thought briefly about bringing spare powder and shot, but discounted the idea. From firing the gun, I would have but seconds. There would be no time or means to reload. Besides, one bullet would be sufficient. I stood and unbuttoned my coat, letting it drop. The night seemed warm enough and I would not be needing it anymore. Then I took my sheathed knife and secreted it in my sleeve.

The perimeter wall must have been eight feet high, but there were trees enough just outside and I easily found one that could be climbed. I waited in its branches until I felt sure no guards were near. Then I let myself down on the other side, hanging for a moment before dropping onto the soft earth of a flowerbed.

The depth of darkness did not allow me to see the lawn across which I walked, but I could feel it through the soles of my shoes. Perfectly flat and short cropped, it was more like a carpet than anything of nature. Then, without a break in the level of the ground, I was walking on flagstones. The side of the building loomed above me, a dark mass only broken by the reflection of stars in window glass. Trailing my right hand against the wall, I began to make my way towards the front. The first window I came to would have been too small to climb through. I guessed a serving corridor must lie behind it. Not the part of the house I wished to be found walking through.

The next window was many times the size – a latticework of diamond-shaped panes. I applied the point of my knife to a strip of lead holding two pieces together. With enough pressure, the soft metal began to bend. Soon I was able to work one sheet of glass free and place it on the ground.

It did not feel to me as if I was working quickly. Rather, I seemed to be watching myself from a distance and in slow motion as I picked away one strip of lead after another. But soon I had accumulated a pile of the small panes and made a hole big enough to climb through.

The air inside the drawing room – for that is what I seemed to have entered – smelled of roses and some kind of spice that I thought I recognised but could not name.

I was standing, trying to discern the layout of the room in almost complete darkness, when I became aware of a bright rectangle of light forming on the floor. I stood frozen, trying to resolve what I was seeing. Furniture and fittings were visible now – high backed chairs, a fireplace. I could even make out the edge of the carpet in front of me. Turning my head, I saw the garden through the windows that ran along the room’s front aspect. All outside was shining. For a moment it seemed as if I had crossed the threshold into a magical world. Then I realised that a gap had opened in the clouds, revealing the face of the moon.

Nature had chosen to light me on my way through the house.

I unlaced my boots and stepped onto the carpet in stockinged feet. By the time I was at the door on the other side of the room, I had cast off my hat and was unbuttoning my blouse. Outside I found a wide gallery with a line of bay windows on the left and dark wood panelling on the right. I dropped the blouse in the shadow beneath a window and undid the ties on my waistband as I walked.

By the time I had reached the halfway point, I was stripped to my corset and chemise. Here the gallery opened out into an entrance hall. The front doors lay to my left, a wide staircase to my right. As I began to climb, I heard a cough behind me.

“Excuse me, miss?”

The words were spoken in a whisper.

I turned, holding the pistol and knife in one hand, which I let hang close to me, nestled into the loose folds of my chemise. A man-at-arms stood, sword in hand, blinking as if he had incompletely woken from sleep. He looked at me in puzzlement. His eyes ran down my body to my feet then back to my chest before he seemed to become aware of a mistake, at which point his gaze dropped to the floor between us.

“I’m lost,” I whispered.

“But… uh… where are you going?”

“I was sleepwalking. I can’t find my way back to his room.”

“Oh… Up and to the right. Can you…”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll find my way now.”

He bobbed his head in a shallow bow, then backed away into the shadows at the side of the staircase, where he might have been standing guard, or perhaps sitting.

Such was the softness of the carpet and the solidity of the stairs that I climbed making no sound. After one flight the stairs divided, each branch doubling back, climbing to a second grand gallery, directly above the one I had already traversed.

I turned right, wondering how I would recognise, out of so many, the one door that would lead to the duke’s bedchambers. But then I saw it – larger than all the others, with a chair positioned next to the wall outside on which sat another man-at-arms, eyes closed, chin resting on his chest.

I might have laughed. A kind of lightness had come over me. I would have thought myself drunk, but for the dizzying clarity with which I saw everything.

The door was unlocked. Of course it was. You don’t need locks with a private army stationed on guard. The door handle turned, silently, the mechanism perfectly maintained and oiled. Such a mixture of efficiency and complacency. Had I known how easy it would be, I might have done it years before.

I pushed the door closed behind me, cutting out the moonlight, and saw that a candle burned on the far side of the room, dripping a stalactite of wax from its holder. The air was warm, though I could see no fireplace. I wriggled my toes against the carpet, realising that heat was rising from the floor itself. A pleasant luxury to have heating without ash or smoke.

Though the room was large, it was dominated by the duke’s bed. Four carved posts supported a canopy. Between the drapes, I could make out the forms of two sleepers. My hand was sweating. I adjusted my grip on the knife handle. My feet carried me forwards. But when I reached the foot of the bed, with my eyes adjusting to the inconstant light of the candle, I saw that the sleepers were both young women. The covers had been half pulled back so that I could see one of them clearly. She might have been fifteen years old. Her hair was cropped short, as mine had once been. My mind jumped back to the two girls I had seen stepping out of the carriage.

There was a space between them where another person might have lain. I stared at it.

All was silent, but the skin on the back of my neck began to prickle. I turned, very slowly. And there, in the shadow towards the corner of the room, I saw him. A seated figure, a white nightshirt raised over his knees. It took me a fraction of a second to realise that he was sitting on a commode.

“Come here,” he said, his voice neither loud nor quiet.

I found myself obeying.

“Which one are you?” he asked. “Have I had you before?”

“No, sir.”

I was close now. My hands hung by my side, keeping the weapons out of his view.

“Are you from the kitchens?”

“No, sir.”

“You look familiar. What is it about you?”

“I don’t know.”

He stood. “Well, what are you waiting for, girl? Clean me up and then we can get started.”

I scarcely saw my own hand moving. In a blink the knife was at his throat. I felt his muscles go taut, but he had the presence of mind to not try to pull away.

He inhaled, as if about to speak, but I increased the pressure of the blade and he snapped his mouth closed again. I did not force it so hard as to cut him deep, but he would feel the sting of it.

I realised then that all I had to do was sit him back down and make a single swift movement to slice through. It would be no harder than butchering a joint of mutton. If I opened up his windpipe, he wouldn’t be able to cry out. The girls might remain sleeping. And the guards. I could walk from the room, retrace my steps, collect my clothes and slip out into the night. I would be miles away by the time the murder was discovered.

Until that moment I’d planned to use the knife on him and the pistol on myself. My lightness of spirit had come from the knowledge that I would not have to walk away.

But in that moment, the spell was lifted.

“Elizabeth Barnabus,” the duke whispered, as if amazed by what he was saying.

“You killed my father.”

“No.”

“He died in debtors’ prison.”

“That wasn’t me…”

I felt a jolt of pain across my chest so intense that, for a second, I thought I had been stabbed. It was my heart – beating fit to burst. All the feelings I had been numb to since crossing the border now rushed back at me. I tensed, ready to cut into his neck. It would be justice to kill him. It would be an execution that the law was impotent to perform. I had the means to set the balance right. I silently begged my arm to move, but my nature would not allow it.

“What happens now?” the duke asked, his voice too loud.

One of the girls shifted in her sleep.

I changed my grip on the knife, making it twitch against his skin, stepping around behind him so that my arm was hooked over his shoulder. If he tried to pull away, the blade would cut him and it would be his own fault.

“Move,” I hissed, pushing him forwards.

At my instruction he opened the door. But having turned the handle full, he then released it so that it sprang back with a metallic click. As I shoved him out into the gallery, the guard next to the door was waking. He got out of the chair and fumbled with his musket.

I aimed my pistol at his head. “Make a noise and you both die.”

The guard seemed not much older than the girls had been. His face was a mask of terror.

I started to back away towards the stairs, pulling the duke with me. “Follow us,” I said.

He did so, holding his musket across his body. When he began to raise it, I shook my head. His arms were trembling. So were mine.

We had reached the top of the stairs. I felt the duke’s muscles tensing, as if readying himself to escape, so I pulled the knife more firmly to his flesh. He gasped.

The dampness of my grip was stickier than before. I had cut him, but not deeply. I began to back him down, one step at a time. He shifted his weight one way and then the other. He was doing all he could to make our progress difficult and noisy.

Escape had not been my intention. And certainly not kidnap. Thus I had no plan. All they had to do was make noise enough to wake the guard stationed below and I would be ended. I wouldn’t be able to hold off the two of them.

I turned the bend in the stairs and started to back down the final flight. The duke was putting up more resistance, as if he sensed my weakness. The young guard had begun to tread more heavily. The sound of his footfalls reverberated.

“Stop that,” I hissed. But too late.

There was a movement behind me and the metallic whisper of a sabre being drawn from its sheath. The young guard’s expression changed. His eyes flicked across to look behind me. I sidestepped, pulling the duke with me so that I could half turn and see the danger. The guardsman who had challenged me earlier stood, sword extended, as if to run me through.

I tensed myself, ready for the inevitable. But instead, he opened his hand, releasing the sword to drop. It clanged and bounced, coming to rest between us.

Only then I became aware of two more figures standing behind him. The boy Tinker and a squat dwarf.

“You’re going to get us all killed,” said Fabulo. “I hope you know that.”

CHAPTER 11

September 25th

They will applaud a horse for its wild gallop and an elephant for its size. Yet they will applaud only that man who can reach beyond his nature and theirs.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

A strange picture we made, the six of us and our various weaponry arranged at levels down that grand staircase. Moonlight and stillness lent unreality to the scene, like Drummond light bathing a tableau vivant on a music hall stage.

Fabulo broke the stillness and the illusion, shifting around the guardsman, though keeping his knife poised at the man’s kidney.

“Don’t kill the duke,” he said. “Not unless you have to. He’s our ticket out of here.”

Tinker rushed forwards and took the musket from the younger guard, who seemed eager to be relieved of it. Then we were moving again, crabwise down to the lower gallery and then at a march along it the way I had come. The men-at-arms led the way, with Fabulo immediately behind, encouraging them with the points of two daggers. I pushed the duke on after them, with Tinker striding next to me.

“How did you find me?” I whispered.

Tinker stooped midstride to pick up my discarded petticoat. The skirt was a few paces further along.

“You left a trail of breadcrumbs,” said Fabulo.

“But what are you even doing here?”

“You can thank the boy for that.”

Tinker now had an armful of my clothes. The moonlight made a pool on the floor beneath each window. We entered the final room. Fabulo closed the door behind us then shifted me out of the way, one of his daggers taking the place of mine at the duke’s throat.

“Clothe yourself,” he said.

Tinker dropped my things and hurried to turn his back on me, as if seeing me dressing was somehow more intimate than having seen me in my undergarments. The younger guardsman stared at the floor. The older one was looking from person to person, as if calculating.

The duke had been silent as we walked the corridor, but now he spoke: “You don’t all need to hang for this.”

“No one’s going to hang today,” said Fabulo.

“The guards outside will see you. You can’t run and take me with you. And you can’t let me go or you’ll be dead in seconds.”