“That’s enough. He eats too much rubbish as it is.” Jake came and took Horatio onto his shoulder.
Sarah dragged her gaze away from the wonder of the animal and looked at the boy. He clearly thought a lot of himself. He was tall and dark-haired, and his clothes, as far as she could tell, were expensive and carelessly worn. He was also rude and sullen. Her first instinct was to dislike him.
The teacher was another matter. A big, powerful man, he was tucking into the breakfast with a hearty joy and talking all at once. “This honey is so good. You should try some, Jake. And the bread! Freshly baked. Mr. Piers is an excellent cook.”
“I’m not hungry.” Jake turned to Sarah. “Why don’t you show me around.”
He seemed consumed with restlessness. She shrugged. “If you like.”
He was already disentangling the monkey’s grip from his neck. She had a panicky second of worry. She hadn’t had a chance yet to see how different the house would be, but she could bluff. And it would be a chance to find out more about them.
“Have fun,” Wharton said. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Sarah.” She opened the door and went out, quickly.
“This is the Great Hall.” She led him under its pale rafters. “It’s Elizabethan. I think the paneling is all original.”
Jake said, “I don’t want the official tour. Where’s the furniture?”
She was wondering about that too. The tiled floor was almost bare. “I suppose Venn’s sold it. Must be expensive, keeping this place going.”
Jake snorted. “My heart bleeds. He’s got enough money to keep me at Swiss boarding school.”
“Maybe you’re the reason he had to sell the furniture.”
She glanced sideways, but if he felt anything, he wasn’t showing it.
The hall was an icebox. Tiny icicles hung inside the mullions of the windows, as if the damp had dripped and solidified in the long night. Someone—probably Piers—had made a loose arrangement of red-berried holly and trailing ivy on the wide sill. A black cat sat next to it, watching them.
“You’re limping,” Jake said.
“Oh, that’s nothing. A blister.” He was observant too, she thought.
They explored the ground floor. The rooms were small and nearly all paneled with intricately carved woodwork, hanging with swags and carved faces. The corridors were long and dim, the floorboards creaking noisily underfoot. Nothing in the house was straight; everything leaned or tilted; even the floors sloped, and Jake had the unsettling feeling that the Abbey was warping almost as he walked through it. Great sideboards held pewter cups and bowls; the lighting was weak; from the small casement windows he glimpsed the green gloom of the Wood through tangled tendrils of ivy.
Sarah walked in front, amazed. She had expected the Abbey to be neglected, and uncomfortable, but not like this. It was filthy. Curtains rotted where they hung, some so threadbare, they would dissolve at a touch. Ceilings dripped into buckets, plaster was damp and in places sprouted whole gargoyles of green mold. The smell of mildew clung in the air.
Below the stairs, Jake looked at the bare spaces where portraits had hung. “Has it always been like this, or this since…his wife?”
She shrugged. “It would have been splendid once. House parties, people, servants, warm fires. Especially at Christmas.”
They came out into a stone passage that led to the cloisters. This was familiar; Sarah opened the doors confidently. “The oldest part—it’s medieval. The real Abbey, where monks once lived.”
Jake saw pointed arches and pillared columns, a vaulted arcade leading around in a great square, open to the sky. It was littered with chopped wood, a wheelbarrow, a rusting bicycle. “Other people have garages. Venn has a cloister. Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“I don’t think that’s possible, is it?” She just wanted to get rid of him now. “This,” she said, “is the watermill,” and flung the door in the wall open, knowing the spray from the great whirling wheel would soak him to the skin.
“Really?” he muttered.
The wheel was a ruined shell. It rotted under years of algae.
She stared at it. Jake watched her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She slammed the door and hurried on.
He strode after her. “How long have you been staying here?”
“Weeks. I’m working to get some money, and help Piers out. What about you?”
“Like I said, a school in Switzerland. Now I’m back.”
“Seems like Venn wasted his money.”
“Sorry?”
“Well, you’re hardly grateful, are you? Do you mean back for good?”
He stared at her, hostile. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.”
They went frostily together up the back stairs. He wasn’t easy to shake off, she thought; even silence didn’t dent his self-absorption. Then he said, “Where’s Venn’s room?”
She had no idea. “Probably off the Gallery.”
“Show me.”
She led him to a turn in the corridor and they went around it and stopped.
Jake stood still. “Wow. As Rebecca would say.”
She smiled, secret. Everyone was impressed by the Long Gallery. Wider than a corridor, it was a room that ran the whole length of the building, maybe a hundred meters long. Old hessian matting covered its oak boards. The white ceiling was pargeted with scrolls and cherubs, and there were the familiar statues she had almost forgotten, in a comforting row on their pedestals of wood. It was dim this morning, as if frost had crept in and fogged the air.
“You all right?”
He was looking at her. She realized her eyes had pricked with tears. She shrugged. “Cold,” she snapped.
They walked down. Jake looked closely at the glass cases of books, the sculptured busts. She caught him glancing at his own reflection, slanted in the sunlight, and hers, behind.
He said, “Were you here, when my father disappeared?”
“No. I…” A cold shiver chilled her, as if a draft passed through the room.
They both turned, as one.
The room had whispered.
The sound had come from the far end of the Gallery, a faint, distant sibilance. Damp air drifted in the dark spaces.
“What was that?” Jake stared, intent.
“I don’t know.”
He listened a moment, then walked quickly down; she caught up with him. “I don’t think…”
He didn’t stop. “Scared?”
“No.” Her eyes glanced back, along the row of locked doors.
The oak boards creaked. There was a different smell down here, a musty stench of decay. She saw that the white ceiling was ringed with watermarks.
Jake stopped.
In a narrow embrasure a wooden panel leaned. At first he thought it was a painting, so with both hands he lifted it and turned it around.
Light flashed and slid.
He saw himself, angled.
It was a wooden framed mirror, its surface so mottled with age that it was patchy and blurred, dark nebulae obscuring his face and eyes.
He leaned the frame against the wall. “Just a mirror. Which is odd because there aren’t any other mirrors. I haven’t seen one in the house. Why is that?”
The answer was not hers. It was a whisper so close, both their hearts jolted. A choked throaty gasp. And the fog in the air seemed thicker, and Sarah knew with sudden fear that it was oozing from the glass. She said quickly, “Turn it back.”
Jake ignored her. He touched the glass, fingers to fingers. And then he gave a cry of terror, because the hand he had thought a reflection of his own caught hold of him and jerked him close.
“Jake,” his own face hissed. “It’s me. Dad.”
7
Long ago, they say, a baby was born in a cottage at the edge of the Wood. The boy was healthy, and his mother protected him with charms and prayers, and amulets of iron hanging from his cradle. But he cried and gurgled so loudly, the sound echoed under the trees.