Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (37 page)

Silas approached her. “I am very pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

The spider-brusher nodded quickly, but cast her eyes down. Silas continued.

“You must know every object in this house, every portrait and sculpture. Every treasure. And perhaps, over the years, you may have heard this and that about the family of the house?”

“Indeed I have, sir. For don’t my naughty little children like to make their messes, spinning their webs over finery as well as the coarsest beams? And don’t folk like to talk and talk in a big house? Aye, they do. . . .”

“Ma’am, have you ever heard of a Mistle Child? Perhaps some valuable thing that’s called by that name?”

The spider-brusher lowered her voice to a whisper. “’Tis no bauble, young sir. Mistle Child be a secret thing. Who has said those words to you? I have not heard tell of a Mistle Child, in, oh . . . many a long year. It was once just an old sayin’, a sort of custom, and even long ago ’twas something of a mystery. Sometimes, it was a word a young woman might use, or a nurse who knew a secret. Now, ’tis just an old thing old Jane sings to herself when she comes to a lonely room or passage, for it’s always the lonely place that brings it to mind, in’it?”

“Can you please tell me what it is, this Mistle Child? Is there more than one?”

“Oh, there be countless numbers of ’em! For as long as boys be boys and girls be girls, there shall always be a Mistle Child somewheres. Poor little innocents. No. I don’t believe there be a Mistle Child in the house,” said the spider-brusher, winking at Silas. “Well, they don’t usually come in, for isn’t that the whole point of the very trouble? They don’t come in for they are
left out
. Maybe this will put a candle on it for you. Here are the first strange words about them, from the old days, just a little ditty now from old dotty Jane.”

The spider-brusher sat down suddenly on the floor and closed her eyes. All about her, the brushes, sticks and floppy-headed mops attached to her belt splayed like spokes upon a cartwheel. She lifted her head, opened her eyes, and softly sang:

Sit ye upon some high place, on hill or tower

And late in an evening, near a wood

A firedrake will appear; mark where it lighteth

And there ye shalle finde an oake

With mistletoe thereon,

At the roots whereof

Be the Mistle Childe hid

Whereof many lost things

May be learned and set right.

Silas tried to read between the lines. Was it an actual child? Some kind of lost child? Had the nameless spirit lost a baby? Is that what it was looking for? Silas remembered the little doll in the spirit’s prison in the catacombs. Is that what Cabel Umber wanted? Silas ran the words of the song over in his head. . . . They seemed to be a kind of instruction, almost a map, but from where to where, and what to what? “I’m still not sure I understand.”

“Old words say ‘follow the firedrake,’ for ain’t that a lost thing too, just a summat, a little flame fallen from the stars and into earth. Way leads on to way, eh? Like to like. And aren’t you nowt but a little lost thing yourself, my Silas?” said the spider-brusher, brushing a dusty hand softly past his cheek.

“Are you saying the firedrake comes from the sky? Is it some kind of light in the sky I need to follow?”

The spider-brusher stood up again, smiled kindly, and straightening her skirts and brushes said, “Oh, sir, how fine the woods will be at this time, why, the forest will be a very Flora’s paradise, I reckon! And the robins and wrens about, such wise creatures do attend the woods, eh? And little birds know about high places, do they not?”

“Madam, thank you,” said Silas, making a small bow in gratitude for her good words. He was beginning to understand what he might be looking for and felt she was showing him how to find it.

“Now please, sirs, let me be about my work. The towers of the north range are nearly grown full up with the endless toils of my little spinners.” She looked up suddenly and laughed. “Eh! My naughty children! Eh? Oh! Some of those towers are very high, so many stairs. So many little webs. But one can get a fine view from a tower, eh, Master Umber? Out over the woods? Under the fiery stars and the burning globes of night, eh?” She swatted Silas playfully on the bottom with a brush as she walked by him.

Realizing they had just been given an invitation, Silas said, “Ma’am, it is late and you should not go alone. May we accompany you there?”

“Oh, sirs,” replied the spider-brusher. “Old Jane thought you’d never ask. Come along, then, and we’ll see if we can find your little lost missel-thrush.”

Silas looked at Lars, who smiled back, and the two of them followed the spider-brusher down the hall, her dust-mops swaying this way and that, back and forth like little pendulums on a dozen clocks.

S
ILAS AND
L
ARS HAD
BEEN FOLLOWING
the spider-brusher for what seemed like many hours, passing through rooms that looked older, more occupied than other parts of the house. They walked down long corridors lit by small candles burning in windows, melting low, waiting for folks who might never be guided home by their light. They passed through a wood-paneled chamber with a fire glowing in its hearth. Some stools were drawn in close to the fire, and while Silas saw no one in the room, he could hear voices murmuring in quiet conversation.

“End of a long day,” said one voice.

“Morning’s a long way off yet,” said another.

“Put more wood on,” one said. “I’m cold right through.”

The spider-brusher put her finger to her lips and said, “Leave ’em to their eventide,” as she led Silas and Lars through the door opposite the fireplace.

Silas saw no more windows as they continued deeper into the interior of the house, and he could no longer hear the wailing of the nameless ghost. Through the evenings at Arvale, her wail had come and gone; sometimes loud as a storm against the walls, other times drifting about the house, a soft but invasive crying from some distant, half-remembered place. The presence of the nameless ghost had almost become a background noise, a sound you could talk over and sometimes almost ignore but for knowing the awful source of it. Now Silas couldn’t hear it all. Perhaps her cries were muffled by the insulating walls of interior stone, dense wood, and thick beams.

On and on they walked. They entered a small hall, very like a chapel, with high ceilings and carvings along the wall depicting the exploits of dozens of past ancestors. There were images of warfare and the taking of captives, as well as scenes of more domestic accomplishments: a midwife at work, a carpenter completing a cupboard, a young man returning home from a successful hunt in the forest. The hall was filled with music. The more Silas tried to focus on a particular sound, the more complex it became. A chorus of ancient voices rose, singing verses of memorial praise, and ending in long melancholic notes that fell upon the ear like the last breath of the dying. To this was added the soul-deep sound of the viol de gamba that stirred the very air into a rich hymn of longing and loss. Then flutes, from the rafters; high notes, like birdcall, flitted across the hall.

“We must not stop,” said the spider-brusher.

“Why not?” asked Silas dreamily, the music lulling him.

“We will lose the path.”

“How can that be?” said Silas.

“There are many ways to get where we’re going. But upon all paths in this house, it is the same. We must keep our minds upon our destination, young masters. That we must. We are passing through the very heart of the house and must press on, or we shall find ourselves lost, just another thing in an old room in need of dusting. Press on, young sirs! Press on! Old Jane knows the way. . . .”

Silas understood her completely. In her way, she knew, as he did, how to find your path among the shadowlands. In all worlds, the work was the same: Stay focused or become just another shadow among the shadows.

But Silas found it hard to walk. Lars had sat down in a chair near the wall with his eyes closed, listening to the music. Silas leaned against him, and looked up as a new tune rose to fill the room. It was a lullaby and so familiar. He closed his eyes and heard the sound of birds.

“No! No! Sirs, come away!” the spider-brusher called to them. Suddenly, something tickled Silas under his chin, at his ear, crawling on his skin. He slapped at it, hitting himself in the face. Lars was also waving his arms as if swatting at a fly.

The spider-brusher stood in front of them, a brush in each hand, laughing. “Come now, my lads! We have many stairs to climb and no time for hymns and tunes and tickles!” She raised the brushes again, poking them toward Silas and Lars in mock threat.

The three left the hall. Before them rose a spiral stair, climbing upward and through the ceiling. As they ascended, the spider-brusher drew her little mops and brushes across the risers and over the rails, and anywhere she saw a web.

They emerged at the top of a high tower in Arvale’s northern range. Three old men in dark velvet robes stood gazing at the sky. They were surrounded by astronomical instruments of every kind: compasses, astrolabes, sextants, primitive telescopes, and orreries of various sizes and complexities with their metal miniature planets and moons circling around and around one another to hypnotic effect.

“These young masters do come to see the firedrake,” said the spider-brusher.

“Oh. Oh,” said one of the old men. “Too late, I am afeard.”

“Why too late?” Silas asked desperately.

The two other men drew back their sleeves and consulted a large, brass astrolabe, pointing at certain lines engraved upon it.

“See here,” said the man who was by far the oldest of the three. “The firedrake has long since past. I cannot recall how long ago it was, but oh, oh, many a-long year it must be now.”

Lars was distracted, looking out over the battlements.

“Pardon, sirs, but are those the lights of Lichport?”

“Aye, master. That is Lichport town.”

In the distance, a carpet of jewels across the land and ended at the sea. Stars blinked over the water.

“That bright one there.” Lars pointed, trying to figure out the town’s layout. “Is that Gormlet house? Silas, is it?”

“I can’t tell from here,” Silas lied. Gormlet house had burned down more than a hundred years ago. But an instant later Silas felt unsure. They might be looking down upon a Lichport far older than he knew.

“Oh, my little poppets,” said the spider-brusher, “Old Jane is sorry to have brought you so far for nowt. All those stairs, and nothing to see . . .”

One of the old men put down a sextant and looked at Silas.

“You come to see the firedrake, but I tell you it flew past long ago. But look up, young sir, look up! Everything we see in the heavens is but a fire out of the past. The flames of those high candles were lit long ago. The sky is a great vault of ancient wisdom, another door into the past that may be opened if we wish. The star’s light lives on long after its living fire has been extinguished. So who can say when a thing begins and ends, eh? Our night is lit by very old light. And the light remembers. You know what I say is true, for you have a constellated look about you. Very well connected . . . indeed you are. Look to the heavens and see what you will, young sir.”

In the past, when Silas used the death watch, he always thought of its mechanism like a heartbeat. When the clock’s heart ticked, the world was as it was. When Silas stopped the dial, time stopped as well. He understood that the firedrake was some kind of brief light passing overhead, its illumination soon lost from sight. For an instant, it had once been a presence. Now it was only a memory; its light extinguished. Silas guessed that, like seeing ghosts, he could see that celestial fire if he wanted to. A comet was not a spirit, but hadn’t the death watch also showed him other things? Old rooms. Fallen buildings. Images of the past of a place. Moments out of time. Why not a celestial event from long ago?
Show me the firedrake,
he thought.
Show me. . . .

Silas could hear his own heartbeat.
Show me the firedrake,
he said over and over to himself. As he did, his heartbeat began to slow. He looked up and closed his eyes, then opened them. Nothing. But slower and slower his heartbeat became and as it stilled for just an instant in his chest, he looked up and saw that the stars had grown brighter, younger. Far beyond the battlements, a tiny gem of brilliance flew toward him. A comet. A dragon-tail flame of blue and red passed over him and streaked south, where it vanished beyond the summer house, above the woods, over an enormous oak that loomed above the other trees. Silas set the image of the firedrake and the tree in his memory and then closed his eyes again.