‘Henry…’ Blue said again.
‘No, really,’ Henry repeated with a little smile. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ He strode across the room. ‘Mr Fogarty,’ he said brightly. ‘Wake up, Mr Fogarty.’ The old boy would be cross about losing his beauty sleep, but at least that was better than this nonsense about his being dead. It had everybody running around like headless chickens.
Mr Fogarty did not move.
‘Henry…’ Blue said.
Henry reached down and shook Mr Fogarty’s shoulder. The old man’s head rolled loosely to one side and his eyes remained closed. Blue appeared beside Henry and gripped his arm. ‘He’s dead, Henry,’ she said gently.
Henry turned to look at her, his eyes desolate. ‘He can’t be dead. I was talking to him just a few minutes ago.’ He turned back and seized Mr Fogarty’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. There was none.
Blue said, ‘I think we should leave him now, Henry. The priests will look after him from here.’
Henry stared at her. ‘Priests?’
‘They cast a spell to open his mouth.’
‘Why would they want to do that?’
‘To release his soul.’ Blue tugged his arm. ‘Come on, Henry. We should leave them to do their work.’
Although he hadn’t seen them enter, the room was filled with wizards in their ceremonial robes. Some had Trinian servants carrying rosaries, thuribles and other religious equipment.
‘He’s not from your world,’ Henry said. He couldn’t think straight, but somehow it felt wrong that Mr Fogarty should have his mouth opened by a spell. Surely he should be in a proper coffin, ready to be buried in a proper grave? It occurred to Henry he didn’t know Mr Fogarty’s religion, or if he even had one. But people who were dead should go to the nearest Church of England, where the vicar would conduct a service and say nice things about them -
He was a bank robber, but everybody loved him, said an imaginary vicar inside Henry’s head.
– and then when everybody had paid their respects, they were carried to the churchyard and…
Henry discovered there were tears streaming down his face even though he didn’t feel all that sad. He didn’t feel anything really, except perhaps numb.
‘He wanted our funeral rites,’ Blue said. ‘We discussed it days ago.’
That was before I came, Henry thought inconsequentially. That was before I even knew.
The room was swimming behind a veil of tears, so he allowed Blue to lead him out into the corridor and down the Palace stairs.
Twenty
It was like his very first visit to the Realm when he’d ended up in the Palace kitchens, fussed over by matronly women. Now Blue brought him here again and sat him at a scrubbed pine table amidst the bustle and the cooking smells. Someone plump in an apron brought them steaming mugs of what turned out to be tea – a kind thought because tea was expensive in the Realm, but they all knew where he came from and wanted to make him feel at home.
Henry stared down into the amber liquid – they didn’t know about adding milk here – and watched ripples spread across its surface as a teardrop struck it. For some reason he couldn’t stop crying, even though it was unmanly and embarrassing.
Blue sat on the bench beside him, so close that her thigh touched his. She curled her hands around her own mug as if to warm them. She had very long, slender fingers. He loved her fingers. She seemed more feminine than he remembered, probably because of the dress. He loved her dress.
‘What are you going to do?’ Blue asked softly.
Henry looked at a point somewhere beyond her shoulder. He should write and tell Mr Fogarty’s daughter that Mr Fogarty was dead, except Mr Fogarty’s daughter already believed Mr Fogarty was dead because Henry had lied to her on Mr Fogarty’s instructions. So he couldn’t write to her now. But he would have to go back and tell Hodge. Hodge would want to know.
Henry’s body began shaking uncontrollably and he felt Blue’s arm around his shoulders. ‘Hush,’ she said into his ear. ‘It’s all right, Henry. It’s all right.’
But it wasn’t all right. Everything had changed. Everything had… stopped.
‘I think I’d better go home,’ Henry said.
‘Will you stay for his funeral?’
He turned his head slightly and focused on her face. After a moment he said, ‘Yes. Yes, I should stay for the funeral, shouldn’t I?’
‘He would have liked that.’
They stared into their mugs together, but neither of them drank.
‘It will be a proper funeral,’ Blue said. ‘A State funeral, with full honours. He was our Gatekeeper.’
It didn’t make any difference. Mr Fogarty had always been impatient with ceremony, but he was dead now so it wouldn’t matter to him what they did. But to please Blue, Henry said, ‘That’s good. That’s very good.’
‘I’ll have your old room made up,’ Blue said.
Pyrgus didn’t know. He would have to go back and tell Pyrgus. ‘I have to go back and tell Pyrgus,’ he said.
‘It’s all right,’ Blue said. ‘We’ve sent Nymph already.’
That was the right thing to do. Nymph was Pyrgus’s wife now. He wondered if Pyrgus would come back for the funeral and risk another bout of time fever. ‘When will it be?’
‘The funeral? In three days.’
The same as funerals at home, he thought.
‘Henry?’ Blue said. ‘After the funeral… Will you go home straightaway?’
Everything had changed, but nothing had changed. He didn’t want to go home. He was miserable at home, had been for the past two years. He didn’t want to live with his mother any more, didn’t want to go to university and then teach in some mouldy old school until he died. But somehow he had to. There simply wasn’t any choice. He looked at Blue and nodded. ‘Yes, I think that would be best. I’ll go home straightaway.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, deeah,’ said a familiar voice behind him.
Twenty-One
The house was a small Tudor mansion surrounded by trees and set in its own grounds. The estate agent claimed it had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth the First, although she’d never actually stayed there. (Pyrgus looked her up after he bought the place and discovered she was quite a famous Analogue World monarch.) It was private, comfortable, a little gloomy and equipped with an astonishing number of vanity mirrors. He kept catching sight of himself unawares and thinking he was looking at his father. It was a weird feeling.
He tore his attention away with an effort. ‘So it’s happened?’ he said.
Nymph nodded. ‘Yes.’
He’d noticed a difference in her since the fever aged him. It was a subtle thing, but definitely there. She was more sober when they were together. She seldom teased him any more. It was almost as if she was treating him… with deference. He knew where it was coming from, of course. When she looked at him, she saw exactly what he saw in the mirror – a middle-aged man. That couldn’t be easy for her, however much she loved him. The time plague had to be stopped soon and not just for the sake of the Realm. If they couldn’t call a halt to it, their marriage was at risk.
‘Henry was there?’ he asked.
Nymph nodded again. ‘Yes.’
‘In the room?’
‘Yes,’ Nymph said soberly. ‘Henry didn’t realise Mr Fogarty was dead – he thought he’d just fallen asleep.’
‘Which explains why he never told anybody.’
‘And why he was so shocked when Blue told him,’ Nymph agreed.
‘He was preparing to take Mr Fogarty home?’
‘Waiting beside the Palace portal, exactly the way it was prophesied,’ Nymph said.
‘But he thought he was taking back a living Gatekeeper!’ Pyrgus exclaimed with budding understanding. ‘Not just the body, as we assumed.’
‘Exactly,’ Nymph said.
The window of their living room looked out across a sweeping lawn bordered in the distance by a line of trees. A peacock strode across the grass, bobbing its head. Peacocks were magnificent birds, found only in the Analogue World now they’d become extinct in the Faerie Realm. This one had come with the house, the property of the previous owner who was too soft-hearted to move it from its old home. At dusk it gave eerie calls. Pyrgus thought it might be looking for its wife, who’d died just before the house changed hands.