The Dark Unwinding (11 page)

“I mean, what are on your feet?”

The smile from the canal bank returned, and he held out his arm. A pair of metal shoe soles, wheels fastened to them, dangled from his hand. “Skates,” he said. “Like for ice, only with wheels instead of blades. We roll in them. Sit on the stairs, and give me your feet.”

My eyes widened. “You must be joking.”

“Now, wait a moment, what was it she said, Davy?” Davy came whizzing by on the skates, Bertram, like a rag doll of a bunny, flopping unperturbed in his usual position. “Oh, yes, now I remember.” Lane raised the timbre of his voice. “‘I am equal to anything you might have in mind, Mr. Moreau.’”

I sat down hard on the stairs and stuck out my foot. Lane’s grin grew larger as he pulled the leather straps of the skates tight over my boot tops. Then he glided effortlessly away, backward.

“Well, up you go,” he said.

I tried to stand, but my feet flew out from under me and I sat down again on the stairs, much harder than I had the first time. Now I understood his bit of revenge, but I did not intend to let him have it. Davy zoomed by, the noise of his rolling loud on the wooden floor of the ballroom. Lane beckoned.

“Use the banister to get upright and find your balance, and when you’ve got it, give one foot a slide to the side, then do the same with the other. Come on. It’s easy.”

I struggled upward and stood, teetering. Cautiously I pushed one foot to the side. The skate rolled, and kept rolling. In three seconds I was flat on the ballroom floor, lost in a pile of skirts. I stayed there, and Lane’s wheeled feet stopped right in front of my face.

“Do you want to quit?”

“No.” Though I’d said it through my teeth.

“Good. Because you haven’t really tried yet. Come on.” He helped get me to my feet, where I wobbled like a toddling child, clinging to his arms. They were surprisingly warm, as they had been at the dock, the muscles tense beneath my fingers. “Do what I said before, but in short steps, picking up each foot when you’re done. Show her, Davy.”

Davy wheeled a half circle and changed his direction, slowing his pace so I could see the rhythmic push and glide of each foot. I watched, and when I looked back up again it was to see Lane’s mocking grin very close to my face. I clenched my teeth and pushed one foot, and then the other, one and then the other, clutching his arms with a grip of iron. We went a few feet and I stumbled, tripping so quickly I nearly knocked both of us down.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I said. My temper was aflame, though I was trying not to show it.

“Me neither,” Lane said. “I can’t see your feet under all that. Think about balancing, hovering right over the skates, and the rhythm of the wheels against the floor.”

I set my jaw and tried again, pushing one foot and the other, wondering how I’d gotten into this mess, one and the other, pretending I was floating, flying just above the skates, back and forth, side to side….

“Look up,” he said.

I raised my gaze from my feet. I was halfway down the ballroom. “Am I doing it?”

“Yes. And a right little fool you look, too.”

I was delighted. “Let go. I want to try it by myself!”

He released my arms, turned expertly in mid-stride, and continued his movement frontward as he watched. I pushed with my feet and instantly fell forward, landing on my hands and knees, where I got a close view of the sparkling reflections on the polished floor. I felt the air move as Davy went by. “I caught my skirt in the wheel, that’s all,” I said, waving away Lane’s hand. I got to my feet and held out my arms, fighting for balance, and then I was off. One, two, three, four strides, and my speed picked up. I could actually feel a wind in my face, and the tickling hum of the wheels traveled up my legs as I flew down the ballroom.

“I’m rolling!” I yelled. “Look! I’m rolling!” I craned my neck behind to see if Lane and Davy were watching, but I could not find them. And the next thing I knew, I had slammed into something that was hard and soft at once, smelling faintly of metal and paint, and knocked myself to the floor. I had skated right into Lane, who had put himself there to keep me from crashing headlong into a mirrored wall.

“Ow,” he said mildly. Once again he pulled me to my feet, holding my arms until I steadied. “Perhaps a little less speed, Miss, until you’ve learned to stop?”

“I want to do it again,” I said breathlessly, and I looked up into a smile that was only teasing now, not mocking, stretching the tiny stubble of an unshaven chin. But the gray eyes above mine were different than I’d ever seen them: calm, soft, without storm or stone, a glassy sea, just as I’d imagined when I discovered the falcon. And inexplicably, they were looking at me.

Heat spread through my chest, blooming like a hothouse flower, and I pulled away both my gaze and my arms, only just keeping my balance. What was I thinking? Had we been in London, the impropriety of this situation would have taken every shred of my good name with it. But I had not even considered such a thing, not here. Stranwyne was a place unto its own, as Lane had said earlier, with rules that were not the rules of the rest of the world. I felt the blossoming pink reach my cheeks at the thought of what my aunt and Mrs. Hardcastle would have said on the subject. And then I felt a tug on my skirt.

Davy was there, holding out a hairpin. My hand flew to my head. Curls were everywhere, loose and spilling all down my back. I took the pin and hurriedly stuffed it into my hair.

“Don’t bother,” Lane said. “It will just come back down again.” I peeked up to find the inscrutable gaze still there, now resting on my hair. He held out an arm. “Hang on and I’ll go beside you this time, and teach you how to stop.”

I looked at the extended arm, at the skin like creamed tea below his rolled-up sleeve, thinking of the warmth I had felt before beneath my hand. I let my hair go free and took the arm. Aunt Alice was not here.

We rolled the length of the ballroom again and again, and each time I went faster, my wild hair flying, the sparkling of the gas lamps blurring in the mirrored reflections. And sometimes I closed my eyes, the better to feel the exhilaration of the wind.

T
he first time I opened my eyes, I could hear Mary’s voice, but the face I saw was Aunt Alice’s, her thick fringe of ironed curls stretching and constricting over features that changed their shape like candle flame. I watched her face bubble and melt, spellbound, until she reached out and grabbed my arm. I tried to pull away, but the nails gripped my flesh like claws. She put my hand into another hand, and I looked up to see Mr. Babcock. He wore a judge’s white-curled wig and, smiling like a predator, raised my hand to his lips as if he would kiss it. “No,” I cried out. “Stop!” But he did not stop. He bit me, slowly, sinking his teeth deep into my hand while Aunt Alice dug in her claws. I shut my eyes against the pain.

The next time I opened them I saw Marianna’s bedchamber blazing with light, every candle lit, voices buzzing and humming with words I could not understand. And some extra sense, some feeling only just awakened, was telling me to run, that I must flee, that I had only seconds to do so. But I could not run, I could not even move, my arm was trapped. I screamed and fought, terrified, writhing in panic, and cold hands held me down, pinning me to the floor. I screamed again, and the voices changed their tone.

And then I wandered away, calm and quiet, my fear forgotten. I padded through the dark corridors, the creaks and groans of the floorboards now familiar to me, through the empty kitchen and into the garden. The moon was full, riding high through tearing clouds, and I felt the gravel of the path bore gently into my bare feet. I was wearing Marianna’s blue dress, and in that dress I could move, fly, flit like a ghost through the warm grasses, all the way to the Lower Village. The village was quiet in the dark — deathly quiet — and I felt mud between my toes. I went shadowlike to the green door, through the sitting room and to the workshop, and then I knew. The mud was in here, too. I lifted the giant switch, the gaslights hissed, and I beheld a massacre. Dismembered arms of shattered porcelain, broken legs, cracked faces and cogs and wheels, all mixed into a jumbled wash of dirt and silt. They were ruined, all of them gone, never to be wound up again. I sank to my knees in the filthy pile, a mass burial gone awry, and cried as if it was me who was broken, who was lost. My crying echoed through the empty workshop, and I cradled the sodden head of my grandmother in my lap.

When I woke, someone was singing, very soft, humming gently beneath their breath. Late morning sun laid yellow beams on Marianna’s carpet, and the coverlets on the bed felt heavy, weighing my body down into the mattress. I sighed, and a woman, a stranger, was suddenly looking down on me.

“Awake, are you?”

I blinked at her slowly. “Am … I ill?” I whispered. My voice was hoarse.

“If you call coming off a bad drunk being ill, then maybe so.”

I frowned, confused, and then the door to the bathing room opened, and Mary came out with a pitcher of water.

“Oh, Miss! How are you feeling, then?

“I’d say she’s got a head fit to split like a ripe melon,” said the woman.

“I don’t have …”

“Mum!” Mary cried. “I’ve been telling you, just because my lady was tipsy once don’t mean she was tipsy twice! She’s just been sick, is all, as anyone with eyes can see. Here, Miss, have some water.”

I sat up, grateful to take it, steadied the glass with my hand, took two sips, and fell back against the pillow. My hand was bandaged, I saw, slight red stains showing through the layers of cloth. I touched it, remembering the preying smile and sharp teeth. “Mr. Babcock … bit me,” I whispered.

“Don’t be talking rot,” said Mary’s mother. “You were so daft with drink you bit yourself.”

“Mum!” Mary protested. “My lady was sick, I tell you! She never did such a thing last time she was tipsy!”

“Mary,” I said shakily, “I haven’t been … I haven’t had spirits since I came to Stranwyne, not even a glass of wine.”

Mrs. Brown whished some disbelieving air through her nose while Mary sat down on the edge of my bed, her freckles wrinkling. “Are you certain, Miss? I would have sworn on my own dad’s Bible that first time that you …”

“Not once, Mary. I swear it.” She looked back at me dubiously. “Just tell me what happened. Please.”

She sighed. “Well, ’twasn’t long before midnight when …”

“Wait … start before that.” I was having trouble recalling last night at all.

“You came in a bit later than your usual time, Miss, remember? Your hair was all down and your cheeks was rosy and you were as chipper as them little larks that dart through the grasses …”

My hair was down. Lane’s arm and rolling in the ballroom. I remembered that.

“… and I asked what you’d been doing and you said I wouldn’t believe it if you told me …”

Another disapproving “whoosh” from the other end of the room.

“… and I had your bit of supper waiting and you got into your gown and had your tea and a think before bed, just like usual.” Mary turned to her mother. “My lady always depends on me to know just what —”

“Mary,” I said again, trying to steady my voice. I remembered nothing of this, not even leaving Lane. “What happened after that?”

“Well, I’d gone to my own room, you see, to be sewing on your dress …”

Had I asked Mary to sew a dress? I didn’t remember.

“… and I heard talk coming from your room, real loud, someone yelling ‘Wheeee!’ as if they were having the jolliest of times, and when I came running the voice was you, Miss, dancing about in your nightgown, and when I asked what my lady was doing, you said, ‘I’m a fish, Mary, and I fly!’ and then you went quiet, and … ’twas like you had a fit, Miss. You stared off into the mirror, and then you lifted up your hand as if you didn’t want to, like, and you bit it, good and hard, and yelled something fearful while you did, and I tied you to the bed and ran double quick and got my mum. She knows the curing of many a thing.”

Disjointed memories crawled through my mind, incongruent and certainly unreal, only they did not feel unreal. I remembered the smell of rancid mud, felt the grit of shattered porcelain in my hand. I thought of the parson blinking his broken eyes, and for the first time in my life I was truly frightened, not of what might be around me, but of what might lurk inside my own head.

“You tossed your guts at about four in the morning, Miss, and you seemed to quiet a bit after that….”

“Mary,” said her mother, “go and fetch me a kettle of hot water, and I’ll make the girl some of my special tea. A real lady’s maid might’ve thought of that already.”

Mary leapt off the bed and ran from the room.

“A good girl, that,” said Mrs. Brown, “though a bit lacking in sense.” She came and stood over me, hands on hips. “’Tis just you and me here, Miss Tulman, and I think you’ll find that unlike my eldest I can hold my tongue when needed. So, time to confess. Where is it? I’ve searched the room, and why ladies would go and keep old hair in a drawer is beyond my imagining, but I haven’t found it, and I’ll admit that you’re cleverer than me. But it’s best to get rid of it, Miss. I’m guessing you didn’t enjoy your little indulgence much, in any case. The screaming terrors don’t strike me as being all that pleasant.”

“The wardrobe was unlocked?” I said stupidly. I thought I had locked away my grandmother’s things, and hidden the key beneath the doily on my bedside table. But then again, I couldn’t be sure of anything I had done, or not done, recently. It was an unfamiliar, horrible feeling.

“Come now, Miss. Before Mary gets back. Let’s have done with it.”

“Mrs. Brown, I swear to you, I have not even seen a bottle of spirits since I came to Stranwyne. I’ve drunk nothing but water and tea.” To my embarrassment, tears formed in my eyes. Mrs. Brown sighed.

“All right, if that’s the way you’re wanting it. But …” She leaned forward over my prostrate form. “… let’s be laying it all on the table. If you’re telling me the truth, young lady, then there’s something wrong, something bad wrong, something that’s beyond my herb garden and tea brews. I’ve let Mary stay in this madhouse ’cause she’s silly, and ’cause there’s no harm in knowing what the enemy is up to, anyhow. Mary couldn’t hold her tongue if it begged her. But one way or the other you’re poison, young miss, and I won’t have my girl a part of it. She’s silly, but she’s my girl, and I won’t have …”

Mary came back in then with the tea things, and Mrs. Brown straightened, crossed her arms over her ample bosom, and said no more.

Mrs. Jefferies brought me a tray in the evening. I was dressed, my hair neatly pinned, seated in a chair before the fire, watching the hearth flames. I was thinking of other girls my age, the ones I saw preening in the park, carefree with their parasols and organdy and doting papas. Why had life singled me out for drudgery and isolation, and to be the instrument of others’ unhappiness? But my one boon, my saving grace, had always been my own mind, where I was free, where I could do as I would, without interference. And now that was being removed from me as well. I had seen the parson blink. I could admit that now. It wasn’t real, but I had seen it just the same, like the phantasms of last night, like the calm expression in a pair of sea-gray eyes. And I had my own teeth marks in the back of my hand. I had looked, unwinding the bandages and comparing the shapes in the mirror. Perhaps Uncle Tully and I were not so different after all.

“Well, buck up, then,” said Mrs. Jefferies. She set down the supper tray hard, making the dishes rattle. “I daresay it can’t be as bad as all that. You ain’t dead.”

I almost smiled. For Mrs. Jefferies, the words had been kindness itself. Mrs. Jefferies backed away to stand against the wall, and I realized she was going to watch me eat, to look out for her precious dishes, I supposed. I examined the tray. Bread, tea, and a steaming soup, dark, but smelling of chicken and onions. Then I saw a white square envelope next to the bowl.

“Oh, it’s for you all right,” Mrs. Jefferies said, following my gaze. “Came on the noon boat.”

I knew the handwriting well. Feeling as if I could sink no lower, I took the envelope, and slit it open with the butter knife.

I could hear the querulous voice coming straight at me through the ink. I sat up suddenly in my chair, letter still in hand. Mrs. Jefferies might be a difficult woman who disliked me, but she had spoken truth to me just a few minutes since, a truth I had never seen. I was not dead yet, and at this moment at least, in full control of my mind. And I had more than three weeks until I went back to Aunt Alice’s, twenty-two days out of prison. There was no reason on earth to squander that time. I could do anything I wanted here. I saw that Mrs. Jefferies was watching me, her face bewildered. I sat back in my chair, crumpled Aunt Alice’s letter, and threw it on the fire.