The Truth About Verity Sparks (11 page)

“Of course not, Saddy. It’s lovely to see you. And you must be Verity.” She turned to me with a smile.

Miss Lillingsworth was a tall, thin, middle-aged lady with a lot of nose, not much chin, and such big teeth she could have eaten an apple through a picket fence. She was badly dressed, and very, very plain – but when she smiled, you forgot what she looked like. And her eyes were lovely.

“Saddy wrote me a brief note this morning, my dear, telling me you’d had an experience that worried and frightened you. Would you care to talk to me about it?”

I glanced at the Professor, and he nodded encouragingly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She waited for a few seconds, and then she nodded encouragingly too. But I didn’t know what to say.

“You had an experience,” she prompted.

I was embarrassed to find myself trembling and near to tears. The Professor spoke for me.

“It seems that Almeria was showing Verity some of her flower pictures. Verity had this particular one in her hands, and …” He turned and gestured for me to go on.

“It was horrible, ma’am,” I whispered. “I felt like I was drowning under a black wave.”

“You were in the water?”

It was so hard to explain. “It was a wave of feelings, ma’am. Hopeless and miserable and sad.”

“And did you see anything?”

“Just bright light and a black thing sort of darting.”

“The snake,” said the Professor. “You remember poor Charles, don’t you? Almeria had just sketched that very picture when it happened.”

“I see.” Miss Lillingsworth looked at me kindly. “Nothing like this has happened before?”

“No,” I whispered.

The Professor couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“May I suggest an experiment, Maria?” He explained that he had with him a client’s letter, and he proposed that Miss Lillingsworth and I both attempt a reading from it. His eyes sparkled with excitement. “The thing is, some subtle influence from Almeria may have affected Verity the other day. So this way we can compare–”

“Father,” interrupted SP. “I think poor Verity is tired of experiments.”

Miss Lillingsworth said nothing, but frowned to show she disapproved.

“What do you say, Verity?” the Professor asked. “It’s entirely up to you.”

The three of them stood, waiting for my answer.

I took a deep breath. “I’ll do it,” I said. With SP and Miss Lillingsworth on my side, I knew I didn’t have to. But I didn’t want to be scared of this new gift, and the way I saw it, the only way not to be scared was to find out more about it.

“You are a brave girl,” said Miss Lillingsworth. She added, in a low voice, very gently, “There’s no need to be frightened.”

Frightened! My teeth were chattering. I only hoped I could go through with it.

Miss Lillingsworth got the Professor to draw the curtains and go and sit with SP on the window seat, and then we began.

“Place your right hand over the letter, shut your eyes, and just wait,” she said. “Pictures or thoughts may float through your mind, or they may not. Don’t force anything. Just wait.”

I did as she told me. Nothing. My mind was a blank. I stopped feeling afraid. My stomach rumbled. A fly buzzed somewhere. And then – my fingers were tingling, and there was the sea and sand and children paddling and a donkey. Noises now too – laughter and the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves, and a man’s voice, just a murmur, and then a woman’s replying, soft and low. “So ’appy,” she said. “So ’appy.”

I opened my eyes and looked up.

“Don’t tell me,” said Miss Lillingsworth. She shut her eyes and put her hand on the paper, and we waited. It was only about a minute before she opened her eyes again.

“That is that,” she said. She shook her hands as if flicking off water, and then stretched them. “Now, Verity. Did you see anything?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. This was nothing like the last time. Nothing scary or horrible. In fact, it was a day at the beach.

“The sea,” I said. “It was like that postcard Cook’s cousin sent from Margate. And I heard voices. They were sweethearts.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, he was talking sweet and low to her, but I couldn’t make out the words, and she was saying she was happy.” I thought some more. “They was in a carriage.”

“Well,” Miss Lillington stood up, went over to the window and opened the curtains. “Well, well!”

“Well, well, what?” asked the Professor. “Did you get a reading, Maria?”

“I did. It was substantially the same as Verity’s.” Miss Lillingsworth stretched her hands again, cracking the joints. “I would say that the subject is alive and well and very happy indeed. I also think he has just married.”

SP and the Professor looked at each other. “Good lord.” said the Professor. “What does your conscience tell you to do, SP?”

“Return their fee and tell the Rhodes we cannot help them,” said SP, promptly.

“I agree, my boy.” The Professor explained briefly that he had been engaged by Mr and Mrs Rhodes to find their missing son and return him to them. They knew he was alive, for he’d sent them one brief letter, assuring them that all was well, and then they’d heard nothing more. The governess, coincidentally, had left their employment at around the same time.

“It’s not her,” I piped up.

“How do you know, Verity?” asked the Professor.

“She said ‘so ’appy’. She drops her aitches, like I did before Miss Judith taught me not to. No governess would speak like that. So at least you can tell his ma and pa it’s not her.”

“I don’t want to tell them anything. Poor lad, he deserves his happiness. We’ll let him escape, eh?”

“But what will they live on?” I asked. All three stared at me. “They can’t be happy if they’ve got no money,” I said. “He’s a gentleman and all.”

“Oh, Verity,” sighed the Professor. “Now you have presented me with a moral dilemma.”

“Beg pardon?”

Miss Lillingsworth put her hand over mine. “That is for you and SP to work out, Saddy. I want to talk to Verity.” She stood up briskly and rang the bell. “Alone.”

“But Maria, I wanted to ask Verity …” The Professor already had his notebook and pencil out, but Miss Lillington shooed him and SP towards the doorway.

“Shall we come back in, say, ten minutes?” the Professor asked.

“I will call for you when I want you, Saddy.”

The Professor patted my shoulder, and SP gave my hand a little squeeze. Then we were alone.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” said Miss Lillingworth. Which was hard to do on her horsehair sofa that was about as comfy as a rock. She sat on a straight-backed chair opposite me, and put her hands in her lap. “I shouldn’t say it, my dear, but we shall do much better without Saddy. You know what I mean.” If she wasn’t such a lady, I’d swear she winked at me. “He always likes to jump in and be doing something when sometimes what you have to do is simply wait. You say you have never had a reading from an object or token before?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But you have the ability to find lost things, I believe. How long have you had that?”

I thought carefully. “Always, I think, ma’am. I used to find Ma’s bits and pieces when I was little, and then at Madame’s, it was the same. I never thought about it much. She was very forgetful, was Madame.”

“Has your gift changed lately in any way?”

“My fingers start to itch.” I thought hard. “I get a bit more of a picture in my mind’s eye than I used to. This thing with the painting and the snake, though – that’s new, that is.”

“It frightened you, I can see. And it came out of the blue? Unexpectedly?”

I nodded.

“Then something has initiated a new phase of psychic perception. Those experiments are the most likely cause. It seems they are developing your psychic skills, in rather the way that practice on an instrument improves one’s musical skills.” She gave a gentle horsy smile. “Let me tell you something about myself. When I was in my late twenties, after a severe illness, I gained the ability to ‘read’ objects. The impressions would come at any time, in any place and, like you, I found them frightening and sometimes overwhelming. To tell you the truth, at first I thought I was going mad and didn’t tell anyone. I prayed a great deal.” She paused. “And then gradually I became aware that just as I had the power to receive these impressions, so did I have the power to block them out.”

“How did you do it, ma’am?”

“I trained my mind. I would picture myself pulling down a window blind, so that the impression was hidden from view.”

A blind. Would that do the trick for me? Perhaps I had better think of myself shutting the lid of a hatbox, or snipping off a length of ribbon.

She must have seen how I was frowning, for she said quickly, “You will find your own method, my dear. For some people, it is deep breathing. Just remember that you are not at the mercy of your talent. It is a gift, and you may be able to help people, to set their minds at rest.” She made a floaty sort of gesture with her hands. “I use my gift as a service to mankind, and I never, never charge.”

Charge? Whatever was she on about?

“Now, may I try to gain some impressions of my own?”

I said I didn’t mind, and so Miss Lillingsworth held her hands about an inch away from my body, and ran them, without touching, all over my head, neck and chest.

“Ah!” she said. At the same moment that I felt a sharp tingle on my collarbone. She pointed to the spot. “What have you there? Is it a locket?”

“It’s just a lucky piece,” I said. “On a cord. Ma gave it to me.”

“May I see it, please?”

I slipped it over my head and handed it to her. She held it on the flat of her palm and looked at it with a puzzled expression for a few seconds. Then she shut her eyes.

At first I watched her but that seemed rude, so I studied the clock on the mantelpiece instead. The clock ticked away and Miss Lillingsworth still had her eyes shut, so then I inspected her ornaments. She had a china cat and a bouquet made of shells and a very ugly pair of vases with peacock feathers in them. I looked at her again. Her mouth was twitching slightly, but her breathing was now so slow and steady that I thought she’d fallen asleep.

“How many sisters do you have?” she asked abruptly, blinking her eyes open.

Before I could answer Millie poked her head in the door.

“Miss Maria, it’s high time you had your tea,” she said. “So I’m bringing it in now. Here come the gentlemen.” And she waddled off towards the kitchen.

SP and the Professor came into the room, followed by Millie with the tea tray. When we were all settled with teacups, and bread and butter, the Professor couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Anything to report, Maria?”

Miss Lillingsworth held out my lucky piece. The Professor briefly examined it, and then looked expectantly at Miss Lillingsworth.

“What do you know about the seventh son of a seventh son, Saddy?”

The Professor thought for a few seconds, and Miss Lillingsworth nibbled at a slice of buttered bread.

“A sort of mystical power has long been given to the number seven,” he began, talking away as usual like he’d swallowed the dictionary. “The seven hills of Rome, Seven Wonders of the World, that sort of thing. The seventh son of seventh son is supposed to be particularly lucky.” He was warming up now, I could tell. “Indeed, he is supposed to inherit a miraculous power of–”

Miss Lillingworth cut him off in full flood. “It isn’t just the seventh son of a seventh son who has this reputation. It’s less well known, but the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter is also believed to have special powers.”

“Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. How fascinating,” said the Professor. He took out his little notebook and pencil and began to scribble, but Miss Lillingsworth put her hand on his arm and stopped him.

“Just listen, Saddy. Years ago I spent some time governessing in Orleans. That’s in France,” she said in an aside to me. “My employer, Madame de Puy, had five daughters and she was desperate for a son. She went to consult an old lady, Mère Lauriel, who was famous in the district. They called her a
septième étoile
.”

“
Septième étoile?
A seventh star?” said the Professor. “What – or who – is that?”

“It is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” said Miss Lillingsworth patiently. I could see that she’d have been a good teacher.

“Please go on, Maria,” said SP.

“A
septième étoile
may have a number of gifts. Mère Lauriel could see the future. But she told me that others can look back into the past. And some of them …” Here she turned to me. “Some of them, Verity, can find that which is lost.”

“Ah,” breathed the Professor. “I see.”

“What happened?” I asked, still caught up in the story. “Did your employer have a son, after all?”

“She did. As a matter of fact, she had twins.” Miss Lillingsworth held out my lucky piece again. “This is Verity’s, Saddy. Her mother gave it to her. I recognised it as soon as I saw it. Mère Lauriel had a little medal just like this, engraved with the sign of the seventh–”

“The seven stars!” I burst out. So that was the point of Miss Lillingsworth’s story. Could it be that my gifts – teleagtivism and psychometry, as the Professor would put it – were something handed down to me, mother to daughter, like family jewels? I thought of Ma, just after Pa died, feverish with typhoid. What did she know about the seven stars? My mind was whirling around so fast that it was hard to think or speak clearly. Or even speak at all. “Miss Lillingsworth, are you saying … do you think … am
I
a seventh star?”

She took my hand. “You have very special gifts. Now, tell me, how many sisters do you have?”

They were all watching me, kind and concerned, expecting an answer. And what could I tell them?

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” The Professor was taken aback. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t rightly know if I’ve got any sisters or not. You see, my uncle Bill told me something the day I left Madame Louisette’s.” I took a deep breath and got it over with. “He told me that I was a foundling left in a basket outside my father’s shop. Ma and Pa adopted me for their own, and never told me nothing about it. They was –” I remembered Judith’s grammar lessons at last, and I gulped back a sob as I corrected myself “–
were
the best, the kindest, the lovingest …”