Ambergate (3 page)

Even as I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the noise funneled upward from below: dogs barking, running feet.

It was so strange in the usual quiet of Murkmere that I stood rooted to the spot. And then Aggie was running up the stairs
toward me. She was breathing fast, her hair tumbling down.

“Scuff! There are three men—soldiers, I think—riding down the drive!”

I stared at her and caught her fear, and my hand went to my mouth. She pulled me over to the window, and we looked out into
the fading light. We couldn’t see the men’s faces, but
they were in uniform and they rode highstepping black horses. These men were important, and they looked set on important business.

Aggie turned to me, her eyes frightened. “Whyever can they be coming to Murkmere?”

The light was waning when the three soldiers reached Murkmere Hall. The stable yard was deserted; a solitary pony whinnied
from one of the dark stalls.

They dismounted in the gathering shadows and tethered their horses to iron hoops in the wall. Mather kicked at the weedy cobbles.
Chance watched his lip curl and knew what he was thinking. Mather liked control and order. He was used to immaculate stables,
grooms standing to attention, lackeys with flaring torches.

“We’ve surprised them,” said Caleb Grouted with satisfaction. “That’s how we want it, isn’t it, Chief?”

Mather cocked his gray-stubbled head to the frenzied barking inside the house. “Not for long, I fear, Lieutenant.”

He began to walk over to a back entrance, a plain but imposing wooden door set in the stone. “It seems the Mistress of Murkmere
employs neither ostlers nor groundsmen. One wonders if she runs the whole place with four-legged servants.”

Caleb sniggered, but then he looked up at the blank façade of the house with its shuttered windows, and some of the
swagger left him. He touched the amulet of egg-sized amber beads around his neck. “We’ll demand supper and shelter before
we start our questioning, eh, Mather? My father would expect hospitality from Miss Cotter. After all, she’s managing this
estate for him.”

“Yes, indeed, Sir,” said Mather drily. He nodded at his bodyguard. “Try some vigorous knocking, Corporal Chance.”

Chance was strong, and his gauntleted hands sounded like hammer blows on the wood. The dogs’ barking grew muffled, as if they
were being shut away. All the same, it took some time before the door was opened, and they saw a girl standing before them,
holding a guttering candle in a pewter holder that quivered in her hand.

She is frightened
, Chance thought, and a pleasant feeling of power stole through him. She was a little younger than he was, short but stiff-backed
and comely, with a startling mass of red-gold hair standing out around her shoulders. He’d never seen hair that color, not
even in the Orphans’ Home where he’d been brought up, so he stood and stared while she stared back at the three of them, speechless
and biting her lip.

“Corporal!” Mather spoke harshly behind him. Hastily, Chance stepped to one side.

“Forgive the intrusion, Miss Cotter,” said Mather.

“You know my name?” said the girl in astonishment.

“Special Officer Mather at your service.” He saluted her, and the girl flinched. “We didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s late,
and we’re weary, and we’ve traveled from the Capital the
past few days. May I introduce my junior officer, Lieutenant Grouted? You will know who he is, of course.”

Chance was not introduced. The girl looked at Caleb, as if dazed. “You are the Lord Protector’s son, Sir?”

Caleb bowed his head, his eyes bright with excitement and anticipation.

Caleb is sure to be the one to question young Mistress Cotter
, thought Chance. He would merely get the servants.
If only I could discover the girl who is Number 102
, he thought.

Mistress Cotter was very pale. “Please, Sirs—forgive me. We’re so unused to visitors here now. We only keep a small household,
but if you’d care for a simple supper and a bedchamber, then I can offer you both.” She hesitated, and her voice trembled.
“I’m afraid my aunt won’t be able to greet you. She’s unwell and has taken to her bed.”

“We need not disturb her,” said Mather.

The girl looked beyond them, at the horses. “We’ve no ostlers. You’ll wish to rub down and feed your mounts, no doubt. There’s
hay in the storeroom.” She gestured across the twilit yard.

“Chance will tend them,” said Mather.

When Chance had finally finished in the stables, it was almost dark. The lantern Miss Cotter had brought him flared in the
wind as he made his way to the back entrance.

He stepped into a passage and wondered which way to go.

“Sir?” A girl, pudding-faced and wearing an apron, stared
eagerly at him from a doorway. He recognized her accent at once. How could he not? The Capital was in his very blood. He tried
to see if she had a brand mark, but a serge sleeve covered her wrist. “Let me show you to Miss Leah’s old parlor, Sir,” she
said.

In the small, dank room to which she brought him, he found Mather and Caleb alone, gulping wine and trying to warm themselves
before a spitting fire—by the look of it, only recently laid and lit. The bare windows gave them a dismal view of the darkening
mere.

“I do not think interrogation is appropriate here,” said Mather in a low voice to his trainees when the girl had left them.
His cool, intelligent eyes regarded them. “When I have the opportunity I shall ask Miss Cotter straight out if she has ever
or indeed still employs a girl from the Capital bought from the Gravengate Home. Only then shall we know if we have our prey
within our grasp.”

“I believe I’ve spotted her already, Sir,” said Chance quickly. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Caleb glower. “Shall
I fetch her, Sir?”

“Wait, Chance,” Mather said. “You are too impetuous. It is best to tread softly through the forest when you are a hunter;
then your quarry is all unaware.”

After a long wait and several jugs of the wine, which was watered down and oversweet, they were ushered into a cold, dimly
lit dining room by a lanky footman in a wig. The curtains had not been drawn against the black windows, and Miss Cotter, who
was already waiting for them at the head of the table, made no move to do so. She had changed into a
green silk skirt and her hair was piled on her head in a glowing mass that seemed to drain the color from her face.

Chance was placed at one end of the table. At the other, Caleb Grouted sat on Miss Cotter’s right side and Mather on her left.
The footman served them with soup and a cold ham joint accompanied by a mess of peas. “Thank you, Jukes, you may go now,”
said Miss Cotter with quaint dignity.

The maid, whom Miss Cotter called Doggett, cleared their dishes, and when she went out, Chance heard whispers in the passage:
another female voice. His ears were sharp: for years as a child he had listened in fear for the whereabouts of his tormentors,
the guardians of the Home in the area of the Capital known as Highgallow. He fingered the broad iron band that he’d had forged
to hide the brand mark on his wrist, and waited.

Miss Cotter scarcely touched her food. “It must be inconvenient for you to leave the Capital and come to such distant parts,
Sir,” she said with an effort to Mather. “A contrast, indeed.”

“You have visited the Capital, Miss Cotter?”

She shook her head.

Caleb leaned toward her over the table. He had downed too much wine and his eyes were glassy. “So you’ve not heard the news
from the Capital? And it concerns Murkmere Hall!”

“No, Sir.” A strange look crossed her face: eager, yet fearful.

“You’ll be glad to hear that my cousin, Miss Leah Tunstall, heir to this very property, has been found. Three long years it
took, but we’ve got her!”

She gave a little gasp and seemed to grow paler still.

“But you need not fear for your livelihood, Miss Cotter. I think it will be a long time before Leah Tunstall comes home to
her inheritance.”

“Why?” she began, her eyes wide. “What…?”

Caleb sniggered into his wine. “She’s not in her right mind. My father has her under his protection.”

“So she has survived!” breathed the girl. Then she looked at Mather in supplication. “Surely she should come home?”

“You can be assured that the Lord Protector will do his best for her,” said Mather stiffly. “He is her uncle by marriage,
is he not? I hear he has the best doctors to treat her.”

“She’s sick? What’s the matter with her, Sir?”

Mather hesitated. His hand brushed the amber at his neck. “She has delusions, so I gather. Some sort of religious fervor has
taken hold of her during her period of privation. She must have been homeless for almost three years. She believes she is
one of the avia.”

“The avia…,” The girl whispered it.

Mather regarded her carefully. “The doctors think that she may have presented early symptoms at Murkmere. It would certainly
explain her extraordinary disappearance from here the night of her father’s death.”

A shiver ran through Chance. He’d always been frightened of the old legend of the avia. He’d never known whether it was true
or not. In the story a group of men and women had desired to fly like the Gods. As punishment, the greatest of the Gods—the
Eagle—made them half-human, half-bird, forever trapped between two forms.

In the Home, Chance and the other orphan children had
been told that what had happened to the avia would happen to them if they didn’t respect authority. For the children, authority
meant the Guardians of the Home. All his years there, Chance lived in constant dread of the ultimate punishment.

Caleb Grouted leaned forward and brushed Miss Cotter’s hand. She withdrew it at once. “We’ll look after Leah, never fear,
Miss Cotter. We won’t let her go until she’s cured of such delusions.” He sniggered again and drained his glass.

Doggett brought in cheese on a china platter. As she offered it to him, Chance held the dish so she could not leave. “Who’s
out there?” he whispered amid the talk at the other end of the table. “There’s another girl in the kitchen, ain’t there?”

When dinner was over, they returned once more to the damp parlor, this time with a decanter of port and a bowl of nero leaf
brought in by Doggett. Miss Cotter departed upstairs to oversee the preparation of their chambers.

Doggett set down the tray and bent to poke the fizzling fire. As she turned, her eyes met Chance’s. It was a sign, he knew
it was. The other female must be out in the kitchen alone, now that the footman had been dismissed. He followed Doggett from
the parlor, mumbling that he needed the privy.

Two steps along the passage, and he’d caught up with Doggett. She turned and beckoned. He knew he’d judged her correctly:
there was treachery in her slant-eyed glance. She was less stupid than she looked, and thought there might be reward in it.

With a growing sense of triumph, he followed her.

Through a swinging door and into the kitchen quarters, Doggett disappeared, gesturing toward another door. There was a sound
from within: the swilling of water from a bucket.

He pushed open the door and went straight in. There was a single candle burning on the table in the center of the room and
flickering light from the dying fire. At the clip of his boots on the stone floor, the girl in the shadows at the sink turned
her head. She was younger than he was, small and slightly built, with long brown hair half hiding her face.

He went up to her without preamble and stood over her.

His shadow was huge on the wall. Her sleeves had been rolled to the elbow for washing the dishes; her hands and forearms were
in the water.

“My name is Corporal Chance. We’re here by order of the Lord Protector.” Chance spoke clearly, so there would be no likelihood
of her misunderstanding, but he knew she’d recognize his accent all too well. “We’ve been sent to find a girl who was in the
Gravengate Orphans’ Home five years ago.”

He could hear her frightened breathing. She didn’t move her hands from the water.

“The girl will have a number, a branded number. We know the girl was brought to work at Murkmere and is still here.”

A sound escaped her, an intake of breath.

Chance didn’t want to pull her fragile arms from the water, to use physical force, for that would be too easy, too quick.
He wanted to savor his triumph.

But suddenly the girl seemed to capitulate of her own accord. She stood away from the sink, lifted a trembling, reddened hand
to brush the hair from her face and gazed up at him in mute appeal. Her eyes were enormous and shone with fear in her shadowed
face.

Chance looked down into her eyes. This was his moment, his victory. He could almost hear Mather’s words of praise. This was
the girl for whom they were looking, he was absolutely certain. There was about this slight, bedraggled girl a dark, secretive
aura that spoke to Chance of his own past: of endless running, stinking hide-holes, and then the Orphans’ Home, with its pain
and misery. He remembered the little boy who had sobbed in the loneliness of the night. She could not hide her past from him,
when he’d suffered it all too.

Chance looked into her eyes and saw his secret self, and was afraid.

He was standing so close to me, I thought he must hear my heart banging. I prayed for Mr. Jukes to come. I looked up at him,
but my eyes weren’t working properly: I couldn’t focus on his face. He was staring down at me. I caught the sharp smell of
his sweat. I waited for him to grab my wet forearms and see the branding.

But he didn’t move. He stood stock-still a moment, then
he dropped his gaze, muttered something and turned on his heel. The kitchen door banged behind him, and I was alone.

I finished washing the dishes, but I couldn’t stop trembling. He didn’t come back. Neither of the other soldiers came for
me. I didn’t understand why. All the same, I waited until the men had left the parlor before I dared clear the glasses and
damp down the fire. I don’t know why I still bothered with my duties when I knew I was doomed: out of habit, perhaps. I didn’t
see Doggett, nor anyone else.