House of Bells (27 page)

She slipped one foot free of its sandal, cautiously, watchful of her balance. Watching the flame hands on either side of her. This way or that, one alcove or the other . . .?

Some malign spirit might inhabit the candles now, but a human hand had set them out this way. With whatever purpose in mind. It couldn't have been meant for a trap – at least, not to trap her: nobody knew she'd be coming this way, she hadn't even known it herself until she came – but there must be a reason for this long aisle of lights. Someone had laid them out and lit them all.

Someone was going to come back and find them not quite all alight, not laid out quite so neatly.

One way or the other.

Just for a moment, she imagined one way, the worst way: the person coming in to find a fire blazing around a sprawled burning body, herself, with the whole library set aflame around her as she'd rolled and kicked in her agony, doomed and disastrous . . .

But that was all Georgie, imagining the worst. Grace wouldn't do that. Grace had no imagination. She just got on with things and let what happened happen. And dealt with that too when it came. Dealt badly, for the most part, came out worse. That was Grace, all Grace.

So was this: crouched and careful and never mind the library, thinking only of herself.

Well, perhaps the care was Georgie's. Grace would have flung more wildly, all devil-may-care and determined. Not cocked her arm and taken aim just where the candles were closest together, thinking it through, hoping to get as many as possible with a single fling.

Grace would probably have flung both sandals, one after the other, not kept one on her foot against a certain need.

Unable to jump that far, Grace would never have thought of hopping.

Cock, aim, fling. From low down and almost sideways, so that the angle of impact would carry as many candles as possible as far as possible.

Their flaming hands, perhaps, tried to catch at the sandal at it flew, but there was almost nothing to them, not enough. She'd flung hard, all of Grace's stubborn effort behind Georgie's thought and purpose.

The sandal toe caught one candle, rocked it on its saucer, knocked it sideways. Spilled its wax.

The body and bulk and heel of the sandal took out three more, sent them skittering across the floor. Opened a way.

Spilled a lot more wax, all across the floor; and one rolling candle didn't go out, and spread its flame generously across the liquid streaks.

Still, there was a gap. Not wide enough: slender arms of flame reached to bridge it, from the last candle standing on the one side to the spilled one on the other where it lay burning in a pool of its own wax. They looked like two hands shaking across a gulf.

Still, she could hop.

Could, and did. All Grace, overriding all Georgie's anxieties: up on her sandalled foot and one magnificent effortful hop, to land splat in that spilled pool, on that fallen candle. Cutting off its reaching arm at the elbow, crushing out its flame, breaking that bridge at its source.

Making a gap broad enough, keeping her out of flame's reach as she hopped again, through the line, beyond the aisle, into the alcove.

She wanted to cry, ‘Safe!' when she got there, like a little girl in a game.

Perhaps she actually did that, under her breath, as though she couldn't hear it. Perhaps Georgie did.

Grace was busy: looking around at the burning puddles of wax, seeing the danger in them, the hands rising, reaching.

It was Georgie who pictured her stamping foot coming down against them, entwined in them, their flame clinging to the splashed wax on her skin and clothes. Clinging and rising, greeting, welcoming . . .

Grace was busy: turning away from those reaching hands, reaching herself to the shadows of a bottom shelf, where she knew the biggest books were always to be found in libraries like this. Her fingers located a tall heavy folio, and dragged it out. Leather-bound, broad and solid: that would do.

She turned back to the spilled spreading fires and used the book like a giant candle-snuffer. More like a candle-crusher, vigorously, violently. Walloped the fallen candles and their burning puddles and their snatching hands together, crushed them underbook, extinguished them one by one.

And then straightened with a huff of satisfaction, almost a shiver of pleasure. It still wasn't over; she was trapped in this alcove now, by that long double line of candles between here and the door, covering all the open floor-space, leaving her no room to sidle free.

Trapped more or less, for the moment. Give or take.

Georgie supposed that she could climb over the bookcase that made the wall of this alcove and down into the next. And the next, and the one after that, until she reached the door. Or she could unbar the shutter here, open the window, climb out that way; that'd be easier. Or . . .

Grace had a weapon, heavy in her hands. She thought she could walk from here to the open door, sweet and easy, crushing as she went.

One good thing about being Grace: she wasn't going to wait for anyone's permission. Not Georgie's, not anyone's.

She took a step out into that gap she'd torn in the neat line of candles, ready to rip it like muslin, all the way back to the hem – only, just as she did so she heard footsteps on the stairs, bold and deliberate, a voice in the hall.

A voice she knew.

Grace ducked back into the alcove out of sight, pressed her shoulders against the wall of books, clutched the folio against her chest almost as though she were trying to disguise herself, trying to pretend to be a book herself.

Suddenly she was shaking again, and her skin was prickling with sweat. That wasn't all Georgie.

The candles, she saw, were just candles again, burning to give light, a little, to mark a path from the door to the far end of the library. Nothing more than that: no fiery gauntlet, no tiny deadly fingers reaching.

They were going to walk in here, walk all the way down that aisle of lights, because what else would you do, what else could you do? It was an open invitation.

Except that there was a gap in the line, and they'd see that, and wonder, and look into the alcove – and see her.

And then what?

She didn't know; but she knew who was coming, or one of them, and she hated that. Whatever this was, whatever it was for, it wasn't anything good: it was creepy and scary and possibly worse than that, something deep down wicked maybe, and she hated that Tom was at the heart of it.

She stood there and listened for him, hiding like a child, eavesdropping like a child. She could feel her own heart beating, pounding like a child's against the rigid leather of the book; she could hear her own breathing and was sure that he must too.

She waited to hear him exclaim:
no, wait, this isn't how I left them. Someone's been here. They might be here still . . .

Instead she heard him laugh, still in the doorway, well out of sight. She heard him speak a word she didn't know, something dark and strong and beyond her understanding.

All the lights went out.

T
hey went away then, Tom and his companion.

She stood in the dark for a long time, still hugging that book. Maybe she was waiting for the candles to leap into flame again. Maybe she was waiting for some kind of understanding to come, or Tom to come back, or someone else, or . . .

Mostly, she thought she was just standing there because it was easier than moving, when she had absolutely no idea where to go, what to do with this, what this was.

She didn't, she
wouldn't
believe in magic. Ghosts were allowed, ghosts were inevitable; but to her mind magic was something else, something other. Insupportable, beyond belief.

And Tom was . . . an innocent, she'd thought. Sweet boy.

If she'd expected anyone, it would've been Webb; but there really wasn't any question. Tom had stood there in the doorway and spoken a word – in Webb's rational language, she supposed – and out went all the lights.

Which was magic, and impossible. And him, which made no sense. And . . .

And so she stood there, at least until she'd stopped shaking and nothing had happened, nothing worse. No more voices, no more lights.

That long, and just a little longer.

It was remarkably hard to move, in fact. That first little step, out from the shelter of this charmingly solid bookcase: really astonishingly hard.

Still, she managed it eventually, if only because the alternative was only to stand there until someone came looking.

One step, and then another: out from shelter, out into the open darkness of the library floor. Perhaps she should still feel sheltered by that darkness, but of course she didn't; ghosts could see in the dark. She felt brutally exposed. Even if nobody came.

She might have followed the line of dead candles, feeling her way with her foot, kicking it; but in fact she didn't need to. The doors were still ajar, and that friendly oil-lamp was still burning in the hallway. She could walk towards the glow and not worry about tripping. She could hurry, even: worrying as she did so about discovery or worse, a figure, a silhouette suddenly appearing in the gap between the half-open doors . . .

It didn't happen. She came to the doors and through them, and only then realized that she was still clutching the folio. And wasn't going to take it back into the shadowy library, so she set it down just there beside the doors, like a mysterious confession,
I did this
, without quite saying either who or what.

There was another door – less tall, more square – which ought, she thought, to lead out on to the courtyard, but it was locked. Back up the stairs, then: all the way to the top, where she was confident of her route even in this fallen darkness.

If there were light switches she didn't grope for them, with the electrics unreliable. She just wanted to be out of this wing, gone from here before anyone came again. Not to get caught.
Oh, Tom . . .

She was suddenly afraid of him, rather. Which wasn't anything she'd expected, or anything she knew how to handle. Grace had been afraid often and often these last years, she was used to that – but never of a boy. Of institutions, yes, men in uniform, judges and policemen and prison warders, but those had been impersonal. They called her Harley, or they called her by a number; they had nicknames and legends of their own that were whispered behind their backs, all up and down the galleries, in and out of cells. They weren't
people
.

This house . . . wasn't like that. It wasn't a battleground. It shouldn't be.

Tom wasn't like that. He wasn't in authority; he had no power over her. He shouldn't have.

He's a magician.
He shouldn't be, but she had seen it. That was power, strange and fearful. And she had seen it when she ought not, where she ought not to have been. There was power in that too, but only if she found a way to use it. Whoever he'd been showing off for – it had been a performance, a demonstration: what else? – it was not her.

Georgie thought he'd be angry, if he found out. She was very fearful of men and their anger. It was a simpler way to be afraid, but just as potent.

She should probably stop thinking of him as a boy.

Through long empty attics, back towards the dormitories – and here was someone coming, flashing a torch against the increasing gloom. For a moment she froze; but only for a moment. Terror faded, as soon as she realized:
not Tom
. Tom wouldn't use an electric torch, where he could use a candle. Wouldn't need to, if he could control flame with a word; but he wouldn't do it anyway.

This figure was shorter than Tom, and stouter. And female, dressed in something long. Long and white . . .

‘Mother Mary!'

‘Ah, there you are, dear. I've been looking for you.' For an instant, the torch beam shone into her face; then it was snapped off. ‘Sorry. I made you flinch, didn't I? I don't like to come this way without a light, and don't tell anyone else I said so but frankly candles are such a nuisance, always going out, and oil lamps are too heavy. Florence Nightingale must have had shoulders like a navvy. Or someone else to carry her lamp for her. That wouldn't surprise me in the least. Behind every great man there's a woman, you know – so it's probably true about great women too. Now come along – our own great man would like a word with you.'

‘The captain?' she said hopefully, not really hopeful.

‘No, the doctor. You've met him, he said.'

‘Yes. They gave me a lift back from town. The doctor and his wife.' The woman in her proper place, presumably, behind him.

‘Yes. Sometimes I think Ruth knows this house better than I do, even. She was here in the war, you know. Well, they both were; but she nursed, and I know what that means. On her feet all day and half the night, in and out, up and down. Men don't have a clue, what we really do for them.' Of course, she'd been a nurse herself; natural sympathy came through. And she was herself the woman behind a great man, or she thought so. Georgie thought she did. ‘I've had people running all over, trying to chase you down, since the doctor lost you; it was Ruth who suggested you might have wandered over to the empty wing. What were you looking for?'

Privacy
was on the tip of her tongue, but that would be a killer. Grace kept quiet; Georgie said, ‘You'll think me silly, but at first I was only trying to find my suitcase. Someone's put it somewhere, and what with everything that went on last night, and changing rooms and so forth, I've lost track of it completely. So I went looking, without really a clue where to start; and once I'd started, I just sort of kept going. To be honest, I think maybe I was glad to be alone for a little bit. I'm not used to so much company . . .'

‘Hmm. That's what Ruth said, more or less: that you'd gravitate that way for the solitude. Well, take us slowly, by all means; there is no hurry here. But remember, dear, this house is a community. You didn't come here to be alone, and we won't leave you so. And don't worry about your case. There's nothing there you need. Things don't matter, only people. Now come along, the doctor wants a word.'