Ambergate Read online

  Also by Patricia Elliott:

  Murkmere

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Elliott

  All rights reserved.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder Children’s Books

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The superstitions in this novel are found in British folklore.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-08863-3

  Contents

  Also by Patricia Elliott:

  Copyright

  PART ONE The Eastern Edge

  Murkmere

  The Wasteland

  Poorgrass Kayes

  PART TWO The Capital

  Gravengate

  The Palace

  Ambergate

  For my husband, David—who is definitely

  “the meaning of his name”

  PART ONE

  The Eastern Edge

  Murkmere

  FIVE YEARS EARLIER

  The little girl was hiding in the long grasses that fringed the mere.

  She had never seen so much water before. She had never seen the way it changed as the sky overhead changed. And in this place the sky was huge and filled with birds. She was frightened of birds, though she had been taught that some were more dangerous than others. In the pocket of her pinafore was the rosemary she had picked from the kitchen garden to keep her safe.

  No one would miss her in the house yet. None of the servants ever came down to the mere. They were fearful of the mud and the deep, weedy water. In the nearest reed bed there was an empty nest, like a huge, upturned pudding bowl, from which grass stuck out untidily. She was bored now, and beginning to whimper to herself at the thought of braving the kitchens again, when she heard a voice close by.

  “Come along, do! I’m taking you home. Can’t you walk faster?”

  It was a child’s voice, impatient, bossy, and very clear, coming from over her head. She was too startled to be frightened, and the little girl who had spoken, who looked a few years older than she was and clutched a boy smaller than them both, stared down at her, equally surprised.

  “What are you doing here?” the older girl demanded, and at her tightened grip on his hand the tiny boy began to wail. He was wearing only a pair of breeches and a tattered shirt, and his chubby forearms were mottled from the cold. She was wearing a velvet coat, laced boots, and a bonnet, and her face was pink with heat and the effort of tugging him along.

  “Beg pardon,” whispered the little girl in the grass, knowing that she had somehow done wrong by being there.

  “The mere belongs to me. No one else must come here.” She glared down. “My name is Leah. What’s your name?”

  The little girl pulled back her left sleeve and held out her arm timidly. “Number 102.”

  Frowning, the girl called Leah studied the branded numbers, the scars still red and puckered. There was a long pause.

  “A number isn’t a name,” she said finally, dismissively. She nodded down at the little boy. “You’d better help me. Hold his other hand.”

  It sounded like a threat. The little boy’s hand was clammy and soft. As the girl took it, he looked up into her face with a dark, trusting gaze, and his wails quieted.

  “Where are we taking him?”

  “Home, of course,” said Leah.

  The three of them began to walk across the hard, sunlit mud. The boy toddled quite willingly now between the two of them. At the water’s edge the younger girl halted, the little boy clinging to her hand. She looked over his head at Leah, puzzled but not frightened yet.

  “We can’t go no further.” She saw the older girl’s face and her voice grew uncertain. “Can we?”

  Leah didn’t answer. She was looking over at the big untidy nest in the reed bed.

  “Is that where he lives?” said the little girl. Anything was possible in this strange country place. But it didn’t seem right that a tiny, tender boy should live there. She saw the gleam of the water and a little shiver of fear came to her in the sunlight.

  “I’ll take him. You stay here.” Leah was bending down and unlacing her boots, beginning to unroll her white stockings. “Don’t look, it’s rude.”

  Obediently, she looked away.

  Then suddenly there was a sound in the undergrowth behind them: a crashing and scrabbling like a large, bemused animal trying to find its way, then a plaintive female cry. “Miss Leah! Miss Leah!”

  Swiftly, Leah pulled on her stockings again and relaced her boots. The intent look in her eyes had vanished and her mouth turned down mutinously “That’s my nurse. She mustn’t know I’m here.”

  She lifted her skirts and ran away, past clumps of rushes toward the overgrown scrub. The other girl went on holding the little boy’s hand, their two palms sticking together. She didn’t know what to do with him. In front of her the water glinted and sparked in the sun; the baked black mud was under their feet, and over their heads curved the vastness of the sky. It was all too big.

  So she led him away from the mere.

  The little boy knew his way home, then; he took her to a cottage. It was without a window and filled with smoke. The girl saw a moving mound of clothes by the fire, bright eyes looking at them. She was too frightened to move, although she’d left the door open. But the little boy ran straight across the earth floor, into the old woman’s arms.

  She kissed and cuddled him, and all the time she was racked by bouts of coughing. When he had wriggled his way into her lap contentedly and her crooning was done, she gazed at the little girl, smiling. Her face had been pitted by the pox, but her eyes were beautiful and still young. The little girl couldn’t smile back; she wasn’t used to smiling.

  She looked away. In the middle of the earth floor was a table, and spread out over it a cloak that shone in the half-light. When she looked closer she saw it wasn’t made from cloth, but from long, silver-white feathers, the softness of the feathers lying over the delicate, bony tracery of the barbs. She stared and touched her pocketful of rosemary, frightened yet curious.

  The old woman was watching her, the child still in her arms. “You like the swanskin?” she said hoarsely.

  The little girl shook her head, then nodded quickly.

  The woman smiled again. “You will not forget it,” she said. The boy scrambled off her lap and began to play with a long wooden box, opening and shutting the lid.

  “Thank you for bringing my grandson back. What is your name?”

  The girl shook her head and whispered, “I don’t have a name.”

  “Everyone has a name,” said the old woman. “But some have to find it for themselves.” She coughed again, spitting into the fire.

  “You will find yours in the end, but only after a journey. It will take you far from here—far from Murkmere…”

  1

  I am the girl with no name. I have a number branded on my left arm, but no name.

  They call me Scuff, here at Murkmere. Soon after I was brought here from the Orphans’ Home in the Capital, they fixed on it, on account of my big shoes, which made me scuffle when I walked. I have almost forgot what the old woman said to me about a journey, for I never want to leave this place. And so I must be content with the nickname Scuff.

  I have a secret. A secret I must never tell.

  Once, when I lived in the Capital, I committed a crime. I did something so wicked I must
never speak of it. If I did, they would come after me: the Lord Protector and his men.

  I think I did this wicked thing because of the ravens. I remember them, those great black birds, their jarring cries as they shifted the air above my head. I think they made me do it, those Birds of Night. Ravens. In the Table of Significance it says they are the birds of Death.

  One spring day, Jethro, the steward, had to leave us alone at Murkmere to go to a funeral. By then I’d been at Murkmere five years or more, but that day my life changed.

  After Jethro had ridden away, Aggie and I couldn’t shut the gates. During the winter they had become stuck fast in the ridged earth.

  Aggie took her hand away from the rusty iron. She looked pale in the morning light, as if she hadn’t slept.

  “Leave them, Scuff. They won’t budge.”

  Overhead a herring gull laughed mockingly, but the rooks were silent in the beeches, where they had new nest homes. I fingered the amulet of red thread around my neck. “Jethro would want them shut while he’s away,” I said doubtfully. “Shall we dig them free? I could fetch spades…”

  Aggie shook her head almost angrily. “Who’s to come bothering us at Murkmere? We’re forgotten here.”

  I always did everything Aggie asked, because she had been kind to me from the moment we met. So I stopped pushing against the unyielding iron and turned to go back to the house. I’d mixed up sand and lemon the night before and had a day of pot-scouring before me. Scouring is tedious work, but I like to see pots and pans winking from their hooks.

  Aggie didn’t follow me, so I stopped. She was standing in the gap between the gates, staring wistfully out at the Wasteland road. I thought she followed Jethro in her mind, was missing him already: Jethro, our young steward, who was Aggie’s love.

  “Don’t you ever want to leave Murkmere, Scuff?” she said, surprising me.

  I looked out at the long road stretching away into the distance. All you could see was sky and marsh and standing water. The Wasteland was a wild place, and what might lie beyond it? Even standing between the gates of Murkmere, you could feel the thrum of wind in your ears, the thrum of dangerous space.

  I shook my head vehemently. “This is my home. Why should I ever want to leave?” Long-ago memories of the Capital stirred, but I pushed them away.

  Aggie sighed. “Sometimes I long…” She didn’t finish, but said, “Do you feel young still, Scuff, truly young still?”

  “I’ve never felt young.”

  “I did feel young once,” Aggie said. “But I don’t anymore, not nowadays. I feel old, as old as Aunt Jennet.”

  “Jethro will be back in three days to help you.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. We all worked too hard, and Aggie hardest of all. There were too few of us at Murkmere. Not enough villagers had joined us over the last three years, since the old Master had died. They were fearful of leaving their cottages open to vagabonds, fearful that the Lord Protector might suddenly decide to take the estate over and they would find themselves in his employ. Jethro said the Protector could not do such a thing lawfully, but I reckoned that, being the most powerful man in the country, he could surely do what he wanted.

  “I wish I could have ridden with Jethro. I long to see somewhere else—another place than this,” Aggie said, all at once passionate. “But he said we shouldn’t go together in case anything happened to us. The Master made me official caretaker of the estate before he died, and so it’s my duty to stay. But I envy Jethro. I do, Scuff!”

  “Even with such a sad end to his journey?” I’d lowered my voice, although there was no need. There was no one to hear that the steward of Murkmere was away to attend a certain funeral. But we had our story ready for anyone who should enquire: that Jethro had gone to market early. Aggie bit her lip. “You’re right. How can I feel envy at such a time? Jethro is devastated by the death of Robert Fane. In truth, Scuff, I don’t know what will happen to the cause now.”

  It always made me nervous when Aggie talked of the rebels. Secretly I hoped that now their leader had been killed they would cease struggling against the Protectorate, and on the Eastern Edge at least we could all lie easier in our beds.

  We began to walk back to the Hall together in silence. Weeds had grown in the spring warmth and tough young grass sprouted from the potholes of the drive. We had to walk on the verges, past the sheep grazing on the rough parkland. Aggie shook her head at the weeds, and at the growth of creeper covering the front of the house.

  “Everything’s even more overgrown than it was when the Master was alive,” she said, twisting her hands together. “It’s so hard to keep this place going.”

  “You do very well,” I said. I didn’t like to see her low-spirited, she who was so warm and generous and kind. “We wouldn’t want the old days back again, any of us.” She smiled at that and tucked her arm into mine, and I was happy.

  “See, Scuff. You’re nearly as tall as I am now and filling out a bit, I declare! You’ll never be as fat as I am, though.” She was not fat, but big-boned. “How old are you, do you think?”

  “They reckoned I was ten when Mr. Silas bought me at the Home, so may be I’m fifteen now, or thereabouts.”

  “Then we should give you a proper name,” Aggie said. “You can’t be Scuff forever. You need a name to suit a young lady!”

  “I shall never be that. Scuff does me very well.”

  “Our girl with no name. Orphan Number 102, from the Capital.” She saw my face. “You need never go back, Scuff. You live here now.” For a moment she looked wistful again. “If only Leah were here too.”

  Jealousy pierced me suddenly. Whenever Aggie talked to me, Leah would somehow come into the conversation. Leah was the late Master’s daughter, who had run away from Murkmere the night he died. She had left Aggie with the responsibility of managing the estate. Nothing had been heard of Leah since she disappeared, almost three years ago.

  I was glad when she went. I’d always thought her a spiteful, unkind girl; I was frightened of her too. I never understood why Aggie cared for her so much.

  Jethro had left in a spring shower, and now another came, a mist of drops too fine to wet us. We began to run the short distance to the Hall. We’d not bothered with hats and cloaks earlier. Aggie was laughing and trying to cover her bright hair, which always curled wild in the damp.

  A shaft of weak sunlight pierced the mist and touched the house, and we were in a green world.

  Murkmere. A safe world.

  So I thought, then.

  2

  Later, on the same day that Aggie and Scuff had struggled in vain to close the gates of Murkmere after Jethro’s departure, three figures in traveling capes were riding purposefully along the Wasteland road toward the neighboring village. Occasionally the wind would tweak aside a cape flap to reveal the dark gray uniform of the Militia beneath, with the distinctive emblem of the Eagle on the jacket pocket.

  The leader, a middle-aged man called Mather, with cropped iron-gray hair and cold eyes, was in the Eastern Edge on an important mission, sent from the Capital by the Lord Protector. He had brought the two youths with him to gain experience. One was the Lord Protector’s own son, Caleb Grouted. The other was Mather’s bodyguard, Chance.

  Chance hunched further into his rain-spattered cape and glanced at Mather. Three years ago, in the Capital, Mather had plucked him from the Highgallow Orphans’ Home as being likely material for the Militia. He never showed any emotion, did Mather, yet Chance longed to impress him above everything, to see that stony face lighten with approval. Chance burned to become more than a mere bodyguard: he wanted to be accepted as an officer—as one of Mather’s men in the Special Interrogation Branch, of which Mather himself was chief. All Chance needed was the opportunity to prove himself to Mather, but so far it hadn’t happened.

  The Wasteland gleamed in the waning light as their horses shied and jittered on the stony road. All Chance could see on either side were pools of still water, yellow-green s
edge, wind-bent trees. All he could hear was the wind moaning about his head. How he missed the Capital, with its maze of narrow streets and secret alleyways, its crowds and clamor!

  A sudden clattering made his horse start so that he had difficulty in preventing it from bolting. If it hadn’t been for Mather’s impatient eye looking around on him, he might have been glad to bolt himself. Eerie white shapes had suddenly risen with great commotion from a pool close to the road. Swans. Chance recognized them from those he had seen on the ornamental lakes in the Capital. He touched his free hand to his amulet, an iron locket at his neck, and tried to remember what it said about swans in the Table of Significance.

  Swans were an omen, he was sure of that.

  As they neared the Lawman’s hut, which stood at the entrance to the village, Chance felt a thrill of anticipation. The Lawman might well hold the information they needed to succeed in their mission; he knew Mather would not hesitate to prise it from him if necessary.

  The hut looked deserted, its watch panel shut fast. Clearly the Lawman was not expecting any strangers. Behind it, nondescript cottages straggled away into the mist and rain. On a rough patch of enclosed land, sheep eyed them incuriously, then went back to pulling at the tufty grass.

  Mather dismounted and tethered his black horse to a broken fence. “Rouse him, Lieutenant,” he said curtly to Caleb Grouted.

  A grin flickered over Caleb’s handsome face. Nipping down from his own horse, he went smartly over to the closed door of the hut and rapped on it with his pistol.

  “Open up, Lawman!” There was the sound of startled movement inside, something heavy knocked over, then a querulous, suspicious voice. “Who is it?”

  “Officers of the Special Interrogation Branch of the Militia!” shouted Caleb with relish.

  There was a shocked silence on the other side of the door, then a bolt slid back. An older man stood blinking at them in fright. Behind him Chance could see the Records table, with a bread roll and half-eaten piece of cheese lying on top; a tankard had fallen on its side so that ale dripped darkly to the floor.