Then the old lord looked across and noticed her. He scowled slightly.
‘Crowe, what is that child doing in my chamber?’
‘Margaret Lightfoot’s daughter,’ Crowe said quietly.
‘Oh, the by-blow.’ Obadiah’s brow cleared a little. ‘Let us see her, then.’ He beckoned Makepeace over.
Makepeace’s last faint hopes of a warm welcome collapsed. She approached slowly, and halted at his bedside. There was costly lace on Obadiah’s nightgown and the cap that drooped over his brow, and Makepeace started helplessly calculating how many weeks it would have taken her mother to make it. But she realized that she was staring, and dropped her gaze quickly. Looking at the rich and powerful was dangerous, like peering into the sun.
Instead, she watched him from under her lashes. She fixed her gaze on his hands, which were loaded with rings. He frightened her. She could see the blue blood in his bunched veins.
‘Ah yes, she’s one of Peter’s,’ murmured Obadiah. ‘Look at that cleft in her chin! And those pale eyes! But you say she’s mad?’
‘Meek but slow most of the time, and frantic when the fits take her,’ said Crowe. ‘The family say it’s grief, and a blow to the head.’
‘If the senses have been knocked out of her, knock them back in again,’ Obadiah snapped. ‘No point in sparing the rod with children or lunatics. They’re much alike — savages if left unchecked. The only cure is discipline. You! Girl! Can you talk?’
Makepeace gave a start, and nodded.
‘We hear you have nightmares, child,’ said Obadiah. ‘Tell us about them.’
Makepeace had promised Mother never to talk about her dreams. But Mother was not Mother any more, and promises no longer seemed to matter very much. So she stammered a few broken sentences about the black room, the whispers and the swooping faces.
Obadiah gave a small, satisfied noise in his throat.
‘The creatures that come in your nightmares, do you know what they are?’ he asked.
Makepeace swallowed, and nodded.
‘Dead things,’ she said.
‘Broken dead things,’ the old lord said, as if this were an important distinction. ‘Weak things — too weak to hold themselves together without a body. They want your body . . . and you know that, do you not? But they will not reach you here. They are vermin, and we destroy them like rats.’
The memory of a molten, vindictive face swooped into Makepeace’s mind. A weak, dead, broken thing. Vermin to be destroyed. She slammed the door on that thought, but it would not stay shut. Makepeace started to shake. She could not help it.
‘Are they damned?’ she blurted out. Is Mother going to Hell? Did I send her to Hell? ‘The minister said—’
‘Oh, pox on the minister!’ snapped Obadiah. ‘You’ve been raised by a nest of Puritans, you stupid girl. A crop-headed, preachy bunch of ranters and ravers. That minister is going to Hell some day, and dragging his raggle-taggle flock with him. And unless you forget every crazy notion they crammed into your head, you’ll go the same way. Did they even christen you?’ He gave a little grunt of approval when Makepeace nodded. ‘Ah, well, that is one thing at least.
‘Those creatures — the ones that want to burrow into your head. Did any of them ever get in?’
‘No,’ Makepeace said, with an involuntary shudder. ‘They tried, but I . . . I fought . . .’
‘We must be certain. Come here! Let me look at you.’ When Makepeace ventured nervously within reach, the old man reached out and gripped her chin with surprising strength.
Startled, Makepeace met his gaze. At once she smelt wrongness like smoke.
His map-wrinkled face was dull, but his eyes were not. They were cloudy amber and cold. She did not understand what it meant, but she knew that there was something very wrong with Obadiah. She did not want to be near him. She was in danger.
His features crinkled and puckered very slightly, as if his face were holding a conversation with itself. Then he half closed his ancient eyes, and examined Makepeace through the gleaming slivers.
Something was happening. Something was touching the sore places in her soul, exploring, probing. She gave a croak of protest, and tried to squirm out of Obadiah’s grip, but his hold was painfully firm. For a moment it was as if she were back in the nightmare, in her own darkened room, with the molten voice in her ear, and the ruthless spirit clawing at her mind . . .
She gave a short, sharp scream, and reached for her soldiers of the mind. As she lashed out in thought, she felt the probing presence flinch back. Obadiah’s hand released her chin. Makepeace lurched backwards, falling to the floor. She curled into a ball, eyes clenched shut, fists over her ears.
‘Ha!’ Obadiah’s exhalation sounded like a laugh. ‘Maybe you did fight them off, after all. Oh, stop your whimpering, child! I shall believe you for now, but understand this — if one of those dead vermin has made a nest in your brain, you are the one in danger. You cannot scour them out without our help.’
Makepeace’s heart was hammering, and she found it hard to breathe. Just for a moment, she had locked gazes with something wrong. She had seen it, and it had seen her. And something had touched her mind the way the dead things did.
But Obadiah was not dead, was he? Makepeace had seen him breathing. She must have been mistaken. Perhaps all aristocrats were just as terrifying.
‘Understand this,’ he said, without warmth. ‘Nobody wants you. Not even your mother’s kin. What will happen to you out in the world, I wonder? Will you be thrown into Bedlam? If not, I suppose you will starve, or freeze to death, or be murdered for the few rags you wear . . . if the dead vermin do not find you first.’
There was a pause, and then the old man spoke again, his voice impatient.
‘Look at the trembling, damp-eyed thing! Put her somewhere where she cannot break anything. Girl — you must show some gratitude and obedience, and cease these fits, or we will throw you out on the moors. And then nobody will protect you when the vermin come for you. They will eat out your brain like the meat of an egg.’
CHAPTER 5
A lean, young manservant led Makepeace up stairway after stairway, and showed her into a narrow little room with a flock bed in it, and a chamber pot. There were bars on the window, but painted birds on the walls, and Makepeace wondered whether it had once been a nursery. The young servant was barely out of boyhood, and his features were beaky, like the white-haired Mr Crowe. Makepeace wondered blearily whether they were related.
‘Count your blessings, and calm your antics,’ he said, as he set down a jug of small beer and a bowl of pottage on the floor for her. ‘No more shrieking and lunging at folks, do you hear? We’ve a stick for tricks like that.’
The door closed behind him, and a key turned in the lock. Makepeace was left alone with her bewilderment. Lunging? When had she done that? She did not know anything any more.
As she ate the food, Makepeace stared out through the bars at the grey sky, the courtyard, and the fields and moors beyond its surrounding wall. Would this be her home forever, this tower-room prison? Would she grow old here, tucked out of sight and mischief, as the Fellmottes’ pet madwoman?
Makepeace could not settle. Her mind was too full. She found herself pacing the little room. Sometimes she realized that she was murmuring to herself, or that the murmur had sunk into her throat and become a guttural noise.
The walls spun as she lurched and turned, their paper peeling like silver birch bark. She was arguing with the heat and noise in her brain. There was somebody else in the room, and they were being unreasonable. But they were never there when she turned.