The Door in the Moon (20 page)

“Come on,” he muttered.

He knew it would be here somewhere.

Wharton dragged himself reluctantly from the glory of the rising planet. “What are we looking for?”

“A hole. A small chink.”

Wharton giggled again, but ignoring him, Piers bent and scrabbled in the dust and rock at the crater wall's base. “There's got to be something here.”

But it was Wharton who said, “Look at that!”

A point of light, pure and golden and warm. It pierced the pure black of shadow like a keyhole in a door.

“That's it.” With considerable satisfaction, Piers rubbed his small fingers together.

“It's a hole. Through to what?”

Piers felt beside it, grasped a knob of rock, and pulled.

With a crack like the opening of an air-lock, a whole rectangle of stone was dragged open, debris dropping from the lintel, a cloud of dust rising to make Wharton cough.

A butterfly gusted through.

Beyond was a green lawn and a pale sky between trees. And deep in the combe, dark as a silhouette, the roofs and turrets of Wintercombe Abbey.

“Brilliant, Piers!” Wharton said, hoarse.

Piers tried to look modest. But it was a complete failure.

And sometimes, sewing in the heat by the open windows, I smell the gorse on the moor, and the far-off salt of the tide. And I think what a house of mystery it is, and how in distant rooms there are small footsteps, and comings and goings, and doors left open when no one is there.

Tonight, as every night, I will be sure my bedroom door is locked.

Letter of Lady Mary Venn to her sister

B
Y THE TIME
Jake was marched into the Place de la Révolution between two armed and eager citizens, his coat was torn and he was hot and hungry, and bitterly angry. But all that vanished from his mind as soon as he saw the crowd.

Heat and fury rose from it; a terrible stench of sweat and ordure. The noise it made was totally unlike the voices of people. It was a howling, pounding, raw blood-lust that was more ferocious than anything he had been steeling himself to expect.

It cowed him.

Petrified him.

The men shoved their way through and pushed him into a small wooden shack, heavily guarded, that had been built up against the walls of a nearby building.

He ducked under the doorway and it was slammed behind him. He stared around.

One flickering lamp guttered in a corner. About twenty prisoners, men, women, and even some children, huddled in misery on rickety benches. Their faces turned to him as one, but their eyes were blank, as if they didn't see him, as if seeing him would be too much of a concession to hope.

Outside, the cries and shouts erupted again, shaking the frail timbers.

“Dad?” Jake whispered.

He moved forward.

The prisoners edged away from him, withdrawing their bedraggled skirts and shoes. He took another step, saw the darkest corner, those that lay there, weeping, sobbing, too terrified even to raise their heads.

And he saw a man, bending over them, talking softly, holding a girl's hand. A man who had somehow gotten water from somewhere, and a clean handkerchief, and was trying to make some hopeless, stupid bandage.

A thin man whose wig was lost and whose hair was dark and whose face was the face Jake dreamed of.

His father.

Jake walked over and crouched in the mud and took the bandage and held it steady.

David looked up.

It wasn't like the other time, in Florence. They didn't hug or cry; his father wasn't half crazy with heat and fever. Instead David grinned with pure relief, and nodded, and slid one arm around Jake's shoulders and squeezed really hard. “You know, I've been hoping you'd drop in, Jake.”

Jake's eyes were bright. He said, “This time we're all here. It's okay now.”

“Good. Because I have to say I was getting just a touch panicky. Venn always cuts things fine. But before we go, you could just hold her wrist for me.”

With a choked laugh Jake held the girl's hand while his father bound the handkerchief around a deep cut. He adjusted the knot delicately and bowed.
“Merci,”
she whispered. And then, “Your son?”

David nodded. “My son.”

“I am so sorry, Doctor. So very sorry.”

Her distress pierced their aura of safety. Jake scrambled up. “Where's the bracelet?”

“Safe.” David drew him discreetly to the corner. “On a chain round my neck.”

“Why didn't you use it, before?”

“Too scared. Too worried about going back, and back. And I've never been able to find the mirror. It must be close. But last time I saw you . . . when that man with the scar . . .”

“Maskelyne.”

“After he told me about the amber stone, I opened it and found a small coiled fossil . . .”

Jake nodded.

“But I had no mirror. I've searched Paris for it. My guess is it's at Versailles. Louis XVI loved mirrors.”

Jake looked around. “And where's Alicia? What happened to her?”

In the darkness a smile of purest delight crossed his father's worn face. “Oh Jake, that old lady! What a character! When we
journeyed
out of the rubble of her house we ended up here, together, about a year ago in this time. She adored it. She set up a salon and had all the noblemen of the city at her séances. Next thing, I heard she'd persuaded one of them—some elderly suitor dripping with money—to marry her and whisk her off to Venice.”

“Venice!” Jake loved the thought. Alicia in a lace gown in a gondola on the Grand Canal! He felt again her frail hand among the rubble of a blitzed house. “That's fantastic.”

“I've had a letter—she's very happy. Of course she knew what would happen here—we both did. We discussed it—she wanted me to go with them. But I said no. Said I'd wait for you.”

He put his arms around Jake. “Because I knew you'd come.”

Behind Jake, the door opened. Daylight slanted in. “One more head to roll,” a voice snapped.

Another prisoner, tall against the dawn, was shoved inside.

Over Jake's shoulder, David saw Venn.

Sarah said, “Be very careful with it.”

They unloaded the automaton next to a stall selling pies. The stench of grease and meat turned her stomach.

The crowd was wild. Gideon slid down beside her, and they gazed in horror at the bedlam.

A mass of people, eating, drinking, laughing, gambling; a celebration of death, and in the center of it all, dark against the red slash of dawn, the guillotine.

“They think they've won,” she whispered.

Gideon's sharp green eyes flicked across the faces in fascination. “And have they?”

Her knowledge was poor. She shrugged. “You'd need to ask Rebecca. But every revolution ends badly, doesn't it? Freedom doesn't last. Freedom is too dangerous. There are always more tyrants. Napoleon. Janus.”

A small girl in a ragged dress came and sat cross-legged on the floor at her feet and nodded sagely. “Too bloody right.” She glanced up. “Time to strike a blow for common sense, then. You got here fast, Sarah.”

Sarah stared. The gloriously dressed creature from the ball was gone—this was an urchin, thin, her face sharp and clever, her eyes lit with a wild enjoyment.

“So did you, Moll,” she said quietly. “Where's Jake?”

“Gone to find David.” Moll stood. On her wrist was a silver bracelet; they watched as she made the slightest adjustment. “Going to find him now. I'll need him to make a very small
journey
back with me,” she said. “Just half an hour. To make a few adjustments. To give Venn a hand.”

The scramble through the entangled house was a nightmare.

Maskelyne led the way, the half coin clutched deep in his pocket. Rebecca followed, the tiny bird's talons digging anxiously in her shoulder. They hurried along the attic corridor and forced their way down the twisting servants' stair, but now all the rails were wreathed in honeysuckle and the floorboards had sprouted with flaring red poppies, as if the seed-fall Maskelyne had conjured had infiltrated every cranny and magically grown.

Below them, the house was haunted. The very walls and floors of it seemed to be warping out of alignment, the ceilings sloping, the windows choked up with greenery, slashed with shafts of moonlight. The Long Gallery was a warm green gloom; roots sprawled across the floorboards.

All around, soft laughter, shifts of movement, the creak of a shutter, the flutter of a butterfly in the corner of her eye, told Rebecca that Wintercombe was part of the Wood now, that already Summer inhabited it completely. Despite the heat, she shivered. Seeds hung in the air; spores were breathed in. Soft rustles drifted through the sprouting leaves. She felt eyes watching her, then heard, closer, the mysterious, enchanting snatch of music she feared, so breathtakingly sweet all she wanted to do was stop and listen to it.

When Maskelyne touched her arm, she had to refocus to see him.

Had she been standing still?

He tugged her on, faster. “Concentrate hard, Becky. Think of the mirror, and the baby. We have to get to them before the Shee do!”

He pulled her down onto hands and knees. “Down there.”

The wide room had become a hollow way, a tunnel of brambles. She crawled into it, felt it tug at her hair, snag on her T-shirt. Behind her, Maskelyne breathed harshly. Deep below the floorboards the fairy music mocked.

Soon her palms were sore; splinters cut her. She was sweating, strangely breathless, as if the very air was changing to some primeval, unbreathable steam, and she was scared to breathe it, because the spores would sprout inside her, she would become a woman of flowers.

The boards had softened. She could feel with every touch of her hand that they were bending, rotting, that white threads of tiny mildew threaded them. Fungus clustered in the cracks.

She was terrified to put her weight down.

Maskelyne breathed, “Becky . . .”

“They'll give way.”

“No. That's what they want you to think. Get on, Becky, quickly.”

“I can't.
”

He said, his voice husky and dry, “Trust me. We're nearly at the door.”

She couldn't see it. She didn't believe in the house anymore. She was an animal in some green tunnel in the Wood and it led nowhere, and she would be crawling through it forever.

Then a thorn stabbed her. She gasped with the pain and saw, just on her left, a crack of darkness.

A cool, misty draft gusted from it.

A cat meowed urgently behind it.

She struggled a hand up toward the lock. As if in retaliation, greenery wreathed her, entwined around her, squeezed the breath from her. It had tendrils tight as hands, pale as lightless fungus. It broke up into bees and wasps. It whipped around her wrists and ankles.

She screamed.

“Hurry, Becky!”

The key was in; she ground it around.

Then she threw her whole weight against the warped wood. It groaned.

And crashed open.

Jake turned his head.

David stood silent.

It was Venn who spoke. His voice was cool with his usual careless, icy composure; his eyes blue in the gloom. He said, “I'm sorry I've been so long, David. We've had a few problems. Summer tried to stop me. She very nearly succeeded.”

David raised his eyebrows, then said, “You look different, O. Thinner. Paler. But I'm very glad you're here.”

Behind him, the guards lined up. “Time to go, milords and ladies,” one mocked. “Time to bow your heads to Madame Guillotine.”

David said, “
Time
. We have all there is and yet it never seems to be enough.” He walked up to Venn. They clasped hands, a brief, warm grip, and Jake saw his father's eyes were damp. Then David stepped back and cleared his throat, and said with elaborate unconcern, “Well, what's the plan? I suppose the mirror is near?”

Jake and Venn shared a glance.

“I mean, there
is
a plan. Right?”

“That depends,” Venn said.

“On?”

“A girl,” Jake muttered. “Aged fifteen, going on fifty.”

“Great! I don't suppose you checked if our names are on some roll of the dead here?”