The Dark Unwinding (7 page)

His back hunched, hovering over the rabbit, but other than that, he did not acknowledge me.

Lane came, dark, silent, and with no mention of our previous conversation, and ten minutes later I was having the oddest breakfast of my life. Mrs. Jefferies served bacon, ham, tea, toast with marmalade, and a kidney pie in a room that tinkled with the clink of cup and plate, while fairly crackling with a strain that was more sensed than heard. I hardly cared; I felt as if I hadn’t eaten properly in a fortnight. I polished off a second plate, four pairs of eyes watching every raise and lower of my fork, three of those pairs wishing me rather more ill, I fancied, than not. The rabbit, surely, could have no opinion in the matter. When I finally sighed and set down the utensil, Mrs. Jefferies cleared her throat, and looked hard at Lane. He broke the silence.

“Aunt Bit and I have a right to know what …” Lane stopped himself and, like his aunt earlier, adjusted his tone. Politeness, it seemed, was the new policy of the morning. “We would … appreciate knowing your plans, Miss Tulman.”

“Can you tell us … how much time we’re likely to have?” Mrs. Jefferies added. Her voice was trembling.

Now I understood the breakfast and even the tablecloth. I made lines in it with my fingernail, counting the stripes. The moment was upon me, and I did not know what to do with it. At length I said, “I cannot tell you my plans, because … because I do not know them myself.”

Lane leaned forward in his seat. “Then you are undecided.”

I made more stripes. There was nothing to be undecided about. My plans were clear, or at least they should be. But there was still so much that I did not understand, even the simple fact of whether Robert would inherit a fortune or a derelict pile of stone that came with nine hundred paupers. And the sight of my uncle’s sleeping face, my father’s only living brother, my only blood relative besides Fat Robert, had unsettled me.

“Then agree to a bargain,” Lane said quickly. “Wait one month. Thirty days until you go to your aunt, and after that, tell her what you will.”

“And what will change after one month, Mr. Moreau?” I looked him full in the face. “I could go back to London and tell them that Frederick Tulman is a respectable old gentleman on the verge of a peerage, and my aunt would still find out the truth in time. Nothing will change.”

“I know it,” he replied. “We’ve all known it, one way or another. The relatives will come, the law will come, Mr. Tully will die. It cannot last, unless …” The gray eyes met mine, his face expressionless. “But you could buy us time. Maybe years, even. You might come to think that worth the lie.”

I bit my lip. He could not know the slow suffocation those years would be to me. But then a new thought occurred. What if Fat Robert did have a sizable fortune? Aunt Alice was cunning; she could hide the extent of it from me, if she wished. And now that this idea had presented itself, it seemed quite clear that this would be exactly what she would do. No matter what might happen in the meantime, I would have to go back to London, and doing so armed with that particular piece of knowledge would be greatly to my advantage. Mrs. Jefferies dabbed her eyes while Davy’s round hand caressed the rabbit.

“If I were to agree to this plan,” I said slowly, “then you would have to tell me everything. Nothing secret and no more hiding, whether it helps your case or it hinders it. I cannot … make a decision without the facts. And in return for your candor, I would give you one month. Could we agree upon that?”

Lane leaned back in his chair, dark brows furrowed, arms crossed. He nodded once.

“Then I think I should start by spending the afternoon with my uncle, in his workshop.”

“No,” he said immediately. “Mr. Tully doesn’t mean harm, but he just doesn’t …” Lane’s jaw set. “The workshop is Mr. Tully’s, and Mr. Tully sets the rules. He won’t allow you back in it.”

My own brows came down, and Mrs. Jefferies put a hand on Lane’s arm. “Davy says to let her.” I looked in surprise at Mrs. Jefferies, and then at Davy, silent as always, his small hand rubbing the long ears of the rabbit, his large eyes on Mrs. Jefferies. “And Mr. Tully, he did take to her….” Mrs. Jefferies shot me a glance, as if there was no accounting for taste. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“I won’t have him upset,” Lane said. He looked at me. “In the workshop, we abide by Mr. Tully’s rules. If he won’t allow it, then he won’t allow it.”

“Davy says not to worry,” Mrs. Jefferies said. My gaze darted back to Davy, brows raised.

Lane flung his napkin down onto the table. “Fine, then.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “And sometime before tomorrow, if you please, I will also require the address of a Mr. Babcock.”

Mrs. Jefferies’s shoulders slumped, and Lane’s gray eyes narrowed at me appraisingly. But despite the ferocity of his gaze, I had the feeling that somehow we’d just shaken hands.

I
sat on a cushion on the floor of the workshop, watching my uncle, kept silent by both my fascination and fear of offense. I was back in the worsted — after a tirade from Mary that would have impressed my aunt Alice — and Uncle Tulman had not only accepted my presence, he had welcomed it, to everyone’s shock, as if previous transgressions had never taken place.

Now Lane stood at a worktable, supposedly painting a small square of wood, but with his stony eyes on me like a mother hen’s on a hawk. Spending the afternoon with my uncle would not really further my purpose, I knew that; it might even hinder it were I to trample again on some enigmatic rule. But people, in my experience, could be sorted like numbers: evens, odds, groups that could work together, and others that could not. My uncle was someone I could not sort at all. I did not like that.

Lane’s brush tapped against the paint jar, and Uncle Tulman sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning over a wrinkled sheet of paper, making alternating numbers and shapes that captivated and yet meant nothing to me. A gaslight gave a soft pop, just audible over the engine hum. My uncle jotted two sets of three numbers on the paper, one upon the other, drew a line, and wrote four numbers beneath, all in the space of a breath.

“Uncle,” I said, “do you multiply in your head?”

Lane shook his head fiercely at me in warning, but Uncle Tulman looked up, as if surprised to find me there. “Simon’s baby!” he said. “Why aren’t you playing?”

Lane’s brows came together, and he looked to his paint, his expression now confused.

“I’m just watching today, Uncle,” I replied carefully.

“Simon watched me play,” Uncle Tulman said. “We did clocks.”

I considered this insight into the father I’d never known, listening to the pen dip and scratch. After a few moments I asked, “What is twenty-five times fifteen, Uncle Tulman?”

“Three hundred seventy-five.” The pen blazed across the page, scrawling a depiction of interlocking wheels. It took me several seconds to discover that my uncle was correct. I glanced at Lane. He was still, gazing at his paintbrush.

“Fifty times one hundred twenty-five?”

“Six thousand two hundred and fifty.”

“Two hundred fifty times three hundred?”

“Seventy-five thousand.”

I had been choosing numbers I thought I could do in my head, but Uncle Tulman was answering before I could begin the first step. “Four hundred eighteen times eight hundred and six?”

“Three hundred thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eight.”

“Nine hundred forty-two times seven hundred and three?”

“Six hundred sixty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-six.” Uncle Tulman’s beard spread wide. Different numbers, letters among them, appeared in rows beneath the drawing. I had the same feeling as when I’d watched the dragon tower rise into the air. What was before me seemed impossible, and yet, there it was.

“Seven hundred seventy-four —” I began, but all at once Uncle Tulman crushed his papers to his chest and leapt to his feet. I flinched.

“Playtime is over!” he yelled, and before the sound of his words had gone there came a knock at the door, three times, very precise. Lane set down his brush and put the lid on his paint. My uncle glanced back and saw me, still sitting on the floor cushion, and began plucking unhappily at his coat. Papers drifted to the floor like slow-falling rain.

Lane spoke up quickly, his voice low and calm. “She can have the green cup, Mr. Tully.”

“The green cup! Yes, yes, the green one. I was forgetting!” My uncle’s agitation evaporated. “Come in!”

Mrs. Jefferies came through the door, still in her cap, pushing a tea cart that rattled over the floor bricks. I wondered where she had gotten tea things. I hadn’t noticed them in my uncle’s little sitting room. Lane whispered from behind me.

“Scoot around. That’s Mr. Tully’s spot. And it would probably be best if you didn’t speak.”

Not inclined to disobey, I moved hurriedly and my uncle Tulman dropped to the floor where I had been, though I could not see what marked that place from the others. Mrs. Jefferies laid a clean cloth right on the floor bricks, as if we were having a picnic, and proceeded to produce toast — buttered, I noticed — hot tea, and a honey pot from the cart. She poured the tea into white porcelain cups, each with a different color stripe painted near its rim.

“Yellow for Lane, rose for me, and now green for you, little niece! Green is for special,” said Uncle Tulman. “That is the way things should be. Do more numbers, Simon’s baby.”

I saw Mrs. Jefferies’s eyes dart quickly to Lane, questioning, but he only lifted a shoulder. I amused my uncle by asking him to multiply or divide whatever random numbers entered my head while Mrs. Jefferies stood against the wall, frowning, watching every sip I took of my tea. I wondered if it bothered her that I was touching these dishes, as it had in the kitchen, but I resisted the temptation to play with the honey spoon. The tea was very good. Orange, maybe. Warmth, strong and sweet, flooded right through my middle, radiating outward to my fingers and toes.

I had finished my second cup and only half my toast when all at once my uncle shouted, “Teatime is over!” Lane set down his cup, his spoon at careful angles, and the sight of the dark brows and tan skin, more suited to Spanish armor and flagons than yellow-striped teacups, made me want to giggle. I put a hand over my mouth, surprised at myself, but then again, I didn’t much care. I felt happier than I had in weeks, years even. Uncle Tulman leapt up from the floor, snapped his arms stiff at his sides, and looked me in the face, unblinking.

“Good night!” he shouted. “Good night!” he said to Lane in the same manner, and again to Mrs. Jefferies. Then, as if released from a spring, he ran to the workshop door and slammed it behind him. Mrs. Jefferies put her hands on her hips and turned to look down her nose at me.

“Were you giving that Mary Brown a bedroom?”

“What?” I said, my eyelids heavy.

“Mary Brown. Were you telling her she could sleep in one of the bedrooms? She’s been moving furniture and cleaning like the devil up there all day.”

I yawned. “I think Mary Brown should have a bedroom wherever she likes.” I stretched my limbs and smiled brightly at Lane. He looked startled.

“Well, you just tell her to be staying out of my kitchen,” hissed Mrs. Jefferies. She cleared the tea things, muttering, while I got to my feet, brushing off my dress, my fleeting gaze fixing on an iron ladder that ran up the wall, past the gaslights, and up into the dimness of the ceiling. One would be able to see the entire workshop from up there. The benches, the toys, the top of Lane’s head, like a bird, hanging from the sky like a bird …

I realized my feet were walking, that I was already halfway across the room, my hand reaching for the first rung. I grabbed a handful of my skirt instead, forcing my feet to stop. What was I thinking? Of course I could not climb the ladder. What an absurd thing to consider. Lane was stacking Uncle Tulman’s papers and putting away the paint, so I swung my arms while I waited for him to finish, still with a handful of the worsted.
Swish, swish, swish
, went the cloth, like dancing. When Mrs. Jefferies began to push the loaded cart, I flitted through the workshop door, away from the temptation of the ladder, and turned toward my uncle’s sitting room and the green-painted door.

“Not that way,” Lane said, once again just behind me. “If Mr. Tully says good night after tea, he means it. He’ll be sleeping by now.”

Mrs. Jefferies came with the rattling cart, and I watched Lane pull down a large lever-shaped switch on the wall. One by one, the gaslights dimmed, popped, and went out, and he turned a key in the lock of the workshop.
Ben Aldridge must have a key, too
, I mused. I rocked back and forth on my heels. “What’s in here?” I asked, reaching for the nearest door latch.

“Nothing,” Lane snapped, immediately softening his tone. “Nothing. It’s just my room, that’s all.”

“Oh,” I said, smiling hugely. “Mustn’t touch, then.”

Mrs. Jefferies had pushed the cart down the hall to the door on the left and was unloading the tea things into a basket sitting on the floor. Lane opened the door and a black space yawned behind it. “This way,” he said. I peeked around his arm. A stone staircase wound down below the floor.

“Take the basket back to the house, love,” said Mrs. Jefferies. “I’m off to see to Davy.” Lane nodded, and she bent him down to place a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek, throwing me a look of sheer malevolence as she did it. I stifled my giggles. Lane took both the basket and the kiss without comment, and then gestured to me, indicating the staircase. I stepped down into the darkness, clinging blindly to the rail, feeling Mrs. Jefferies’s eyes on my back as I descended.

About halfway down, the light grew, the air cooled, and at the bottom of the winding stair I found myself in another tunnel. Sconces of gaslight were set on a twisting, wrought-iron letter
S
, like in the carriage tunnel, but this time there was no curving brick. The lights were connected by pipes tacked onto huge squares of rough-hewn stone, and the ceiling was much lower, uneven. Water dripped, the burning lamps hissed, and Lane’s footsteps came softly down the stones while I twirled my dress, swishing as I looked around. “Is it old?” I asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes. Older than the house, even, except for the chapel. It led to the brew house, once upon a time.” He adjusted the basket handles and began walking. I skipped after, hurrying to keep up with his voice. “Mr. Tully uses it to go back and forth, when he goes back and forth at all, but that’s only on Thursdays now.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You ought to use this way, too. It would be better, I think, if you didn’t walk through the village. Not on your own.”

I wondered vaguely why this might be as I trailed my fingers along the damp wall, counting the gaslights on each side as we passed.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three
… The pitch of Lane’s voice was so low and resonant in the tunnel. I wanted to hear it again. “Tell me about pink,” I said.

After a few moments, he replied, “Aunt Bit says her mother told her that Mr. Tully would cry and cry as a baby, and bang his head against anything hard, so that they had to sew pillows to cover all the cradle wood. The only place he calmed was in his mother’s room, and that was …”

“Pink!” I guessed.

“That’s right. So Miss Marianna had the whole house painted or papered that way, every room. I don’t think Mr. Tully’s brothers liked that much.” Lane paused. “Did your father … did he never speak about Mr. Tully, then?”

“I’ve never talked to my father. He was dead before I could’ve.” I hopped over the puddles, waving my arms for balance. “But you can bet your buttons Aunt Alice doesn’t know.”

Lane nodded. “Miss Marianna spent her life keeping Mr. Tully hidden.”

“Oh, I reckon Uncle George just didn’t have the courage to tell her,” I said. “I wouldn’t have, if Aunt Alice had been my wife. She’s a nasty old so-and-so.” The flames in the gas globes seemed to jump and twist, like sparks. Two hundred and sixteen dancing sparks. I smiled, and then I realized that Lane had paused and was half turned to me.

“There’s not much that any of us wouldn’t do for Mr. Tully,” he said. “You should remember that.” He was another darkness in the tunnel, a lithe shadow amongst the shadows of the gas glow. Then he adjusted the basket and walked on, and I came after him, my dress swishing.
One hundred thirty-three, one hundred thirty-four, one hundred thirty-five …

I realized he was climbing another set of stone steps, ducking through a low door at their top. I did the same, and we were standing on the far end of the chapel room, near the hearth. I looked back and saw a square of wall standing open, the stones a thin ruse mortared onto a heavy, thick-planked door. Lane shut it, and the door disappeared into the wall. “The people who built Stranwyne Keep must have been Catholic, I think,” he said. “Rich Catholics, in need of a quick way out.”

I stood still, panting a little, breathing in the scent of old stone. The room was much darker than when last I was in it; the sun did not penetrate the windows. The mirror stood a few feet away, to my left, and then I glimpsed the parson, smiling from his little table, his cracked face leering in the dim. I stared, my gaze caught as if in a net. I took a step forward, tripping a little over my skirt.

“Careful,” Lane said. Then for the first time, I heard him chuckle, a very throaty sound. “Do you know who that is?”

I shook my head, still moving forward, my breath coming hard. The walk must have been longer than I thought. My head was light, spinning.

“It’s Mr. George,” said Lane. “He thumps the table and scolds when you turn his key, or he did before he got broken anyway. Mr. Tully dressed him like a parson because he said George was always telling him what to do.” Lane laughed again.

I inched forward, staring at Aunt Alice’s dead husband, the echo of Lane’s laughter moving loud and soft, loud and soft around the walls.

“And all because I found that parson’s hat,” he said, “blowing across the moors….”

Loud and soft the laughter echoed, and I could not tell whether the sound was inside my head or out. The room swam, and the porcelain sneered. Fear tickled, snaking up my back.

“Then the coal shipment was delayed and we couldn’t run the engines and Mr. Tully got upset, and well, it was best to move it out, before anything else got smashed….”

The parson grinned, and I saw the smaller cracks that ran outward from the large one on his cheek, spiderwebs of breakage spreading over the pale face. The creeping fear coiled around my neck, squeezing out my breath.

“Mr. Tully said a chapel was the proper place for a parson….”

Laughter slithered along the walls, but I could not move or look away. I could not feel the floor beneath my feet. The parson’s cracked gaze glittered black into mine as I stood there, heart beating in my ears and throat, suffocating from lack of breath, unable to break the spell of my stare. And then, very slowly, the eyelids came down, and the glass eyes blinked.