‘Or perhaps we’ll hold out until your enemies take Grizehayes tomorrow,’ suggested Makepeace.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ snapped Lady April. ‘We can hold out against a siege until the end of the war, if necessary! We have enough provisions and shot for two whole months.’
Makepeace laughed out loud. ‘Do you think the war will be over in two months?’
‘The Queen is back in the country with money, arms and troops for the King’s cause,’ declared Lady April. ‘London will soon lose heart. The rebels are already crumbling.’ Her certainty was cold and monumental, like marble.
‘No, they’re not!’ exclaimed Makepeace. ‘And London’s fierce, my lady. It’s a quarrelsome, stinking madhouse, but it has a will like the Juggernaut. I don’t care how ancient and clever you are. If you say the war’s ending, you’re blind.’
‘How dare you!’ Lady April sounded angry, but Makepeace thought she detected the tiniest hint of something else.
‘I watched two Elders die today,’ Makepeace declared loudly. A shocked silence pooled like blood. ‘Sir Anthony’s ghosts possessed Symond, and one of your soldiers killed him. And those ghosts — those wise, all-knowing ghosts — didn’t see it coming. They had never really noticed that soldier, you see. They didn’t care that he’d lost a brother at Hangerdon Hill. And then he shot them in the head.
‘You’ve been missing things, important things, because there are people you never notice. And now it’s too late for you all. This isn’t like the other wars you’ve fought. Your wits and centuries won’t help you this time. This is new. This is the world ending, Lady April.’
‘Enough!’ rapped Lady April. ‘You have exhausted our patience.’
Men were venturing carefully down the steps, two of them carrying candles that underlit their faces. At their rear descended Lady April, armed with a pair of wicked-looking knives.
Carefully James lifted one of the smaller barrels, hefted it to his shoulder, then flung it at one of the candle-carriers. The barrel struck his hand, and the candle flew against the wall and went out. The other turned too quickly to see what had happened, and the motion killed the candle flame. There was consternation and confusion.
‘Something leaped at me!’
‘I saw something before the candle went out! The red of the light reflected in a dozen eyes! I . . . do not think they were all dogs.’
‘There’s something in the dark! I can hear it growling!’
‘If you can hear it,’ Lady April rasped, ‘then you know where it is!’
But the growler was on the move. Makepeace relaxed into Bear. She dropped to all fours, and it felt easy and necessary. His nose was hers, her eyes were his. She let her throat vibrate with deep and ominous rumbles.
Bear’s not a child I have to humour. He’s not a Fury to keep on a chain. I don’t need to be ashamed or afraid of him. He’s me. Whatever we were, now we’re us.
The first man was knocked unconscious by one long side-swipe. A second aimed a slash of his sword in the direction of Makepeace’s growls, and was knocked over backwards by a mastiff and a greyhound. A third tried to run to the stairs for more light, and was flung bodily into a little stack of barrels.
‘I have the boy!’ shouted White Crowe suddenly. There were sounds of a scuffle.
Makepeace lurched towards the noise, but suddenly thin, strong fingers clasped the sides of her head and gripped fistfuls of her hair.
‘Mongrel!’ The hard voice of Lady April rasped in Makepeace’s ear. ‘Ingrate!’ And Makepeace screamed as a spirit lunged out, and bit into her mind’s defences like an axe. It caught her off guard and she had no time to brace for it.
Makepeace had been attacked by ghosts before, but they had always been trying to make a home in her. This was different. This was a bombardment, and Lady April did not care what she destroyed. Makepeace fought back and felt her secret allies do the same.
All of us. We learned to fight together in the end. Even as she felt painful cracks appear in her mind’s shell, there was a sad jubilation in that thought. At the same time, she could sense the Elder’s frustration. Makepeace was losing, but much more slowly than expected.
Then Makepeace smelt fear that was not her own, and sensed the hairline cracks of doubt now running through Lady April’s marble souls.
‘My lady,’ called White Crowe, his voice anxious. ‘There is something here. A glowing red star. It looks a bit like a lit match . . .’
The assault on Makepeace’s brain abruptly halted as she was physically thrown aside.
‘Fools!’ shouted Lady April. ‘That is gunpowder!’ Makepeace saw the old woman speed like a greyhound through the darkness, towards the glowing, crimson star of the lit match . . .
And that bright red dot was the epicentre when the world broke.
The explosion was deafening, and the force of it knocked Makepeace back, the way a careless hand might fell a house of cards. There was a brief rush of heat, and then a lot of things seemed to be raining around her. The air was full of smoke and flour. She sat up coughing, just in time to see a large, jagged chunk of the wall and ceiling buckle and crash down on to the slabs.
Ashen and astonished-looking sky gawped down through the gap. James stumbled over rubble to her side, and helped her up. A small distance away, White Crowe sat dazed and dust-covered. If there was anything left of Lady April it was under the great fallen pile of masonry.
James was mouthing something. Makepeace’s ears were ringing, and his voice was as faint as a ghost, but she thought she understood. She hurried up the cellar stairs with him, stepped carefully past Young Crowe’s unconscious body, and gaped at the beautiful crack that had appeared in the wall.
It was just wide enough for two young people to slip through, and let themselves fall on to the grass outside. It was even easier for the dogs as they followed.
CHAPTER 39
Many hours later, in the early afternoon, Makepeace and James stopped to rest near a spinney at the top of a hill. It had been an old hill fort in ancient times, but now there was just a strangely shaped mound with views across the surrounding countryside.
Both were feeling battered and exhausted inside and out, and it had caught up with them at last. James was still recovering from playing host to five arrogant Fellmotte ghosts, and being crushed into a corner of himself. Makepeace’s own battles with the Elder ghosts had left her battered and a little melancholy. They had left a dusting of their memories, like the ashes of singed moths, and for the moment it flavoured everything she saw.
Both siblings had a fine collection of bruises, which were showing through their skin in all colours of the rainbow. Furthermore, Makepeace’s arms ached from carrying the turnspit dog, whose short legs tired more quickly than those of the other dogs.
‘What’s that?’ said James.
In the far distance, the two of them could see a tall whisker of brownish-grey smoke. It was too large to come from a chimney or campfire, and the wrong colour for woodsmoke. It was the wrong time of year for stubble fires.
Makepeace got out the diptych dial, and looked at the compass. She tried to remember the maps that she had so carefully pieced together, but she already knew in her heart where the smoke was coming from.
‘Grizehayes,’ said James in a whisper. He looked numb and shocked, and Makepeace knew that her face wore the same expression.
Grizehayes the invulnerable. Grizehayes the eternal, with centuries encrusted upon it like barnacles. Grizehayes the unchanging rock in the world’s river. Their prison, their enemy, their shelter, their home.