Murkmere Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2006 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: October 2009

  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: 978-0-316-08876-3

  The text was set in Carre Noir, and the display type is ITC Blackadder.

  Contents

  Copyright

  PART ONE: The Watchtower

  I: The Rooks’ Omen

  II: Wounded Eagle

  III: Forbidden

  IV: The Battle of the Birds

  V: Speaking to Mr. Silas

  VI: The Tower

  VII: Crow

  VIII: Great Bird

  IX: Matt Humble

  X: Swanskin

  XI: Wet Feathers

  XII: Planning Escape

  XIII: The Wind of Desolation

  XIV: What Happened to Eliza

  XV: Return to Murkmere

  PART TWO: The Shadowskin

  XVI: Marks in the Dust

  XVII: Destruction

  XVIII: Night

  XIX: Alone

  XX: Porter Grouted

  XXI: The Ball Begins

  XXII: The Truth Is Out

  XXIII: The Master’s Message

  XXIV: Evil Schemes

  XXV: Decision

  XXVI: The Open Window

  XXVII: Silas

  XXVIII: Shadowskin

  For my nieces, Charlotte, Vanessa, Samantha, and

  Gerry, because I hope this is your sort of story,

  and to the memory of my mother

  With thanks to Chris Powling and Bob Hull for their

  encouragement when this novel was first conceived

  Perhaps there is a Leah at some time in everyone’s life: unpredictable, demanding, most generous best friend, cruelest enemy.

  But the Leah in this story came later. When I first began thinking about Murkmere, it was because I had a single vivid image in my mind, and had to make sense of it. Meanwhile, I’d often driven past Murkmere Hall on the A12 in Suffolk. It hadn’t become Murkmere to me then, but was a vast slab of a house set in lumpy parkland. I imagined a girl wandering beneath the dark oak trees — a girl, half-wild, shut away and bored, who was waiting for her story to begin.

  The girl became Leah, and Leah’s story begins when Aggie comes to Murkmere.

  — Patricia Elliott

  PART ONE

  The Watchtower

  I

  The Rooks’ Omen

  Clouds hang low in the sky where I live. They seem to touch the flat brown fields around our village, and to shadow the broad backs of the horses pulling the plow. They drift across the wide sky like swans’ feathers.

  There were swans on the mere when I first went to Murkmere Hall, the first time I met Leah. There are still swans there today, but everything else has changed. All I knew then was what I saw around me: the village, the fields, and, behind its iron gates on the Wasteland road, the great shadowy expanse of the Murkmere estate. In those days I knew nothing of corruption and betrayal, and the evil of ambitious men.

  But you can’t wipe away the past like chalk from a slate. I can never be that innocent girl again. I am someone else now.

  The year had only recently turned when I rode in Jethro’s wagon to take up my new position at Murkmere Hall, and though the mist wasn’t drifting in from the sea that morning, it was bitterly cold. As the wagon jerked over the frozen ruts in the road, the Wasteland on either side of us was thickly spread with a gray frost, the leafless trees glistening like sucked bones.

  “Will you wish me luck, Jethro?” I said, trying to steady myself against a pile of sacks, while the bag that contained my few spare clothes rolled softly against me.

  From my position high up in the wagon, I could see only the back of Jethro’s curly head, and I studied it anxiously, waiting. It always took a long time for him to speak. Jethro Sim, our neighbor’s son, was a boy who chose his words carefully.

  Jethro didn’t turn from leading Tansy, though the reins lay slack in his hands. The old mare blew warm clouds of mist around him; little puffs rose each time she placed her heavy hooves on the frozen road.

  “Murkmere’s no place for you, Aggie. You shouldn’t be going.”

  “I’ve no choice, and you know that,” I said, provoked. Who was Jethro to say what I should do? He was only a few years older than I. “It’s the Master’s command. Besides, my mother fared well enough at Murkmere when she was lady’s maid there long ago. So shall I.”

  Then excitement got the better of me. I leaned forward, so I could see Jethro’s profile. He was scowling.

  “Aren’t you pleased for me at all, Jethro?” I said, trying to coax a smile from him. “Think of all the things I’ll learn, the clothes I’ll wear! I’m to be a companion, not a servant.”

  “Aye, to the Master’s ward,” he retorted. “A lunatic girl. They say Mr. Tunstall hides her away deliberately.”

  “Oh, gossip! I’ve heard that too,” I said. “I don’t see why Murkmere should be a bad place. Why, you’ve never been inside the gates!”

  “I have indeed. I was once late with my dues and took them in myself. I had to give them to the steward, Silas Seed. I saw … enough.”

  Words died between us. I slumped back against the sacks, clutching the sides of the wagon with numb fingers as it swayed on. Ahead, the walls of the Murkmere estate smudged the horizon.

  I didn’t remember my parents. Since their death from the spitting sickness when I was three, I’d lived with my Aunt Jennet. I’d always thought I’d have to spend my life at the spinning wheel as the other village girls did after leaving school. I loathed spinning with a deep and awful loathing, and knew my clumsy fingers would never support my aunt and me. Now the Master of Murkmere had offered me the opportunity to escape a spinster’s life, and my wages would keep us both. All my childhood I’d longed to know more about Murkmere Hall, where my mother had worked before she’d married. I thought if I knew more about Murkmere, I’d know more about my mother.

  Why, then, did I feel such dread now?

  The high walls of the estate loomed on our left. Jethro halted Tansy before the gates, and came to lift me down as the mare stood blowing placidly.

  “Careful, Aggie! You’ll spoil your finery!”

  I couldn’t tell whether Jethro was teasing me or not. He always looked serious, did Jethro, but sometimes his eyes had a smile hiding in them as if he laughed secretly at me.

  I knew I looked ridiculous now. Aunt Jennet had done my hair herself, in her anxiety braiding the springing copper clumps of it so tightly that it pulled my eyebrows up in surprise under my hat. Beneath my cloak, the bodice of my ancient best dress was tight as a sausage skin, and I’d so many layers on against the cold I was sure I looked as fat as one as well. I was fifteen years old and bursting out in all directions, except upward. Maybe that was why Jethro still treated me like a child, though he hadn’t been grown to a man long himself, for all his new beard and solemn air.

  I was sick to my belly with fear as he set me down. “Jethro,” I wailed. “The birds have given me no signs. They hide away in this cold. I can’t tell what’s to become of me, whether it be bad or good.”

  My life, like the lives of everyone else, was bound by watching the signs. It was the birds that gave us the signs, the birds that
showed us what was to come, for each bird had its own significance. But in the dead heart of winter few birds are active. They might have flown away entirely from the bare face of the earth, so deathly silent was the land.

  Jethro set my hat straight as he might a small girl’s, and his brown eyes looked into mine, bright as a robin’s. “You have nothing to fear if you wear your amulet, Aggie.” As he spoke he touched his own amulet, a simple bunch of dried rose-mary sticking from the pocket of his old tweed jacket.

  I felt feverishly round my neck for the strip of leather; the golden amber that hung from it, warm from lying against my skin, slotted smoothly into my palm like a new-laid egg. It had been my mother’s once, but she had no need of protection now. It was only the living whose souls were in danger from the Birds of Night.

  Jethro looked awkward. “I should go, Aggie. I’ve no desire to meet Silas Seed again.”

  Silas Seed, the steward of Murkmere, had come to the village himself a fortnight ago to search me out and give me the Master’s message. I’d thought him an exceedingly handsome young man when I met him, but I thought it best not to let Jethro know this.

  I nodded, biting my lip now that the moment had come to say goodbye, and drawing my thin red cloak around me. “Watch over Aunt Jennet for me, Jethro. Don’t let her do too much.”

  “Can’t stop her,” he grunted, but I knew he’d milk our cow himself and carry the pail to our cottage.

  The mention of my aunt nearly had me in tears. “Thank you for bringing me here,” I said stiffly, turning my face away.

  Jethro didn’t reply, and next I heard the jingle of the harness and the clomp of Tansy’s hooves on the hard ground as she began to move away. When I turned at last, the wagon had blurred with the horizon.

  Beyond the gates a straight drive, as rutted as the road, ran over flat, lumpy parkland until it reached the gray stone bulk of the Hall in the distance. Among the forest of chimneys few were smoking; below them were rows of shuttered windows. Huge oaks shadowed the empty grass before the house, their bare branches scratching at the lowering sky.

  A frightened homesickness caught in my throat. I thought of our two-room cottage, cramped and dark, but cozy under its thatch and furnished with Aunt Jennet’s treasured possessions; and of the common nearby, busy with villagers and their animals. Now I was alone, completely alone, for the first time in my life, and the thick silence of mid-winter was all around me.

  But this was my chance, and I had to take it.

  There was a rusty bell hanging by one of the gateposts; a frayed rope trailed down, furled with ivy. Perhaps if I pulled it, a servant — a footman, perhaps — would come and open the gates for me. I straightened my back, plumped out my skirts, and gave a determined tug.

  The jangle from the bell was unexpectedly loud and harsh in the silence, and it awoke a raucous echo: the cawing of what seemed to be hundreds of rooks. In the distance I saw an undulating black cloud rise above the cluster of beeches that must hold their nest-homes. My head full of the clamor, I sank trembling against the gatepost and clutched my amber as if my life depended on it. I knew the deadly significance of rooks. Everyone did.

  “Miss Agnes, Agnes Cotter. You’re welcome to Murkmere. But you look as white as bleached bed linen. Are we such ogres here?”

  A man’s voice roused me. It was a charming voice, the vowels musical and the tone full of concern. I’d heard it before. It was the voice of Silas Seed.

  “I’m well, Sir,” I moaned, my head down. “But I can’t come through. The rooks have given me the sign. Death is waiting if I step inside the gates!”

  Calmly, Silas Seed took off his glove and unlocked the gate with a key from his waistcoat pocket. Then he put his hand out to me. It was a white hand, very clean, the nails manicured to show the half-moons, the fingers long and elegant. My head still bent, I hid my own stubby, rough ones in my skirt. Peering under my lashes, I saw another pair of legs, this one clad in darned breeches, standing next to Silas’s gleaming boots.

  “Come now, Miss Agnes,” Silas Seed said gently. “Don’t you remember that rooks nesting near a house are a sign of Good Fortune?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted, confused. That was a sign as well. I thought I knew the Table of Significance so well, yet sometimes it appeared to contradict itself.

  “Come on through, then, without a care,” said the steward. “The rooks here signify no ill omen. Why do you think I walk so freely?”

  I dared look up at him. Silas Seed was a good head taller than Jethro, taller than all the village boys, and taller than the keeper who stood dourly at his side, not looking at either of us.

  “You’ve a fine amulet, Sir, that’s why!” I muttered. I could see it nestling round his throat, a whole string of glowing amber stones above the silk cravat.

  Silas Seed’s dark eyes lit with amusement. “Then if you stay close by me, you’ve nothing to fear! I beg you come with me, Miss Agnes, for I’m sure you’ve turned to ice. You’re earlier than I expected. I’d not posted anyone to watch for you at the gates. A good thing we were doing the morning rounds and saw you.” He nodded to the keeper to pick up my bundle of belongings, and his hand remained outstretched. “I have asked the housekeeper to organize hot food for you in the kitchen. Come.”

  It seemed a long time since I’d had breakfast in the early morning darkness. And the bread had been stale again, with only boiled rosemary water to moisten it, for yesterday’s milk was finished and we dared not milk our cow till daybreak for fear of the Night Birds.

  I looked up again at the steward, at his finely drawn features and smooth-shaven jaw, his black hair glossy as a blackbird’s wing beneath the three-cornered hat. I thought I caught admiration in his eyes as he looked back at me. A handsome young gentleman who did not see me as a child.

  I put my hand into his at last and let him lead me through the gates.

  “You’ve never been to Murkmere before?” he said. The frosty weeds in the holes of the drive bobbed as his fur-lined cloak swept over them; puddles crackled under our boots. “Then you won’t have seen the mere that gives the Hall its name. Look — there.”

  I saw beyond a stretch of frozen sedge, the pale sheen of ice. My first sight of the mere. I knew it immediately as a fearful, desolate place.

  “Is the water deep beneath the ice, Sir?” I asked timidly.

  “Some say it’s bottomless, that the water turns black a little way down.” He paused, and added somberly, “A maid drowned in it a year back. When she was brought out by one of the keepers, her body was full bloated with black water.”

  I was struck dumb. It was then that I saw someone standing motionless on the far shore, a pale figure against the dark reeds, too slight to be a man. I thought it must be the spirit of the drowned maid, and I gasped.

  Silas Seed followed my gaze and frowned. “It’s Miss Leah, the Master’s ward, out again, alone. She shouldn’t be there without her maid.”

  “But what’s she doing?”

  “We’ve swans on the mere. She likes to go there by herself to watch for them. A foolish thing to do when the mere’s all ice. I must send a footman out to her.”

  He moved on quickly, the keeper tramping after him, expressionless as ever. I hesitated a moment, straining my eyes to pick out the girl’s features. But even as I did so, the ghostly figure dissolved into the overgrown scrub and was gone.

  In the main kitchen of Murkmere Hall a woman was standing at one side of the huge chimney, lifting her skirts to the blaze of the fire. As we came in she hastily rearranged her clothing, and the keys at her lumpen waist jangled with agitation.

  “Oh, Mr. Silas. I wasn’t expecting you to bring …” She gestured at me with a flustered hand. “I’d thought Doggett …”

  “Doggett should be accompanying Miss Leah, Mistress Crumplin,” said Silas Seed coldly, “but I see that once again Miss Leah is alone by the mere in this icy weather. I’ve spoken to Doggett about the danger before. It mustn’t happen again, Mistress
Crumplin, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. Silas,” whined the woman. “But Miss Leah is like quicksilver. You’ve only to glance away and the girl is gone. Why she should want to escape outside in this weather, I don’t know.”

  “Escape?” said Silas, and he laughed, his dark eyes on me as if we shared the joke. “You make her sound like a prisoner, Mistress Crumplin!”

  I scarcely listened, still breathless from keeping up with the steward’s long stride through archways, courtyards, and stable yard. I was looking at a little girl, standing almost in the hearth on the other side of the fire, who was turning a spit with great effort, her cheeks scarlet with heat. As the joint turned, the sides of the meat were glossy and brown in the firelight and the juices dripped down into a pan. I caught the dense, sweet fragrance of the meat and for a moment I thought I’d faint.

  I felt Silas Seed take my arm. My vision cleared. The housekeeper was staring at me. I took in a plump, creased face, wisps of gray hair escaping beneath a cap. The steward pressed my arm, pushing me forward a little.

  “Forgive me, Agnes. Let me introduce Mistress Crumplin, housekeeper to the Hall. She will oversee your requirements here.”

  It sounded a very grand arrangement for a village girl. I looked up at the woman and tried to smile, but the house-keeper’s pasty face was stolid and cold.

  “And this is Miss Agnes Cotter, Mistress Crumplin,” said Silas Seed. He paused, and then added with strange emphasis, or so it seemed to me, “Her mother, Eliza, worked here many years ago. No doubt you’ll remember her, Mistress Crumplin?”

  The housekeeper’s mouth hung loose. She gave Silas Seed a startled glance, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod at her, as if confirming what he’d said. “Eliza, eh?” she said slowly. “I’d not realized that Miss Leah’s companion was Eliza’s daughter,” and she came over and peered into my face.