Castle of Shadows (18 page)

Tobias followed. She had let go of him now. He seemed to be over his first terror, if the solid stream of curses was anything to go by. ‘Slow down here,’ she called. ‘Take your time. Feel for it.’ They were drawing away, little by little, from the deadly gleam of the lantern. Just one last bit. The bad bit. She stopped. Put out her arm to steady him. They crouched at the top of a slope, and she saw that the cut on his cheek was still bleeding. Tobias didn’t seem to notice. He looked over her shoulder at what lay before them, and his face went rigid with shock. ‘Oh my God!’

It was the ridge. The one where the wind had nearly murdered her weeks before. Part of her mind wondered if she had always been meant to die here, and fate had just postponed it, as a sort of joke.

‘We can’t cross that!’ Tobias reached out and grabbed her shoulder. ‘I can’t do it, Charlie. I’m terrified of
heights. Always have been. I can’t do this!’

‘Remember what you told me about the dark?’ she shouted back to him over the roar of the wind. ‘The dark can’t kill you.’

‘Yeah? Well, the dark
can’t
kill you. This can!’

Light crawled up the slope behind them. ‘So can he!’ Charlie cried. ‘I know which one I’d rather have kill me, and it isn’t Watch! I’ve got to go first. Promise me you’ll follow.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Don’t let them win, Tobias. Please!’

He groaned. ‘I’ll try,’ he said.

She got to her feet. A bullet whizzed by her head. She flinched and nearly fell. Tobias grabbed her leg. ‘Let go!’ She balanced against the push of the wind, stepped onto the ridge. Five more steps, and
jump
! She landed flat on her stomach, scrambled up and turned. ‘Come on, Tobias!’ she screamed.

He staggered to his feet. The wind shoved him. He crouched down. A bullet shattered the air where his head had been a second before. Charlie looked past him and saw Watch. He had nearly reached the ridge. The gun was tucked back into its holster, and he was crawling up the slope, pushing the lantern in front of him.

‘Go now, Tobias! He’s coming!’

Tobias stood. He looked across ten feet of nothingness at her, and she saw the terror in his eyes. He was shaking.

‘Please, Tobias!’ she moaned. ‘Now!’

He stretched out his arms for balance and stepped onto the ridge. Took another step. Two more. Wobbled. Looked down. And froze.

‘
Tobias!
’

Watch stopped crawling. Pulled his pistol from its holster. Took aim.

The sound of her scream was lost in the roar of the pistol. Tobias thudded onto the roof beside her. He lay face down, unmoving, his legs dangling in empty air. Charlie grabbed him under the arms and tugged, trying to pull him away from the edge. He was too heavy. She couldn’t shift him. ‘Tobias!’ She shouted his name in despair, then turned to face their pursuer.

Watch had reached the ridge. He set down his lantern, calmly reloaded his pistol.
Damn!
thought Charlie. He put one foot on the ridge, looked up, saw her, aimed the pistol at her head. The wind screamed with her. It picked Watch up and threw him off the roof.

‘Are you shot?’ Charlie shouted, shaking Tobias. ‘Did he kill you?’ Her hands were sticky with blood.

She grabbed his jacket collar, tried to turn him over. She heard a moan. Tobias lifted his head. ‘The only person likely to kill me is you,’ he wheezed. ‘Stop throttling me!’ Groaning, he drew his legs beneath him and crawled away from the edge. He struggled to sit up. His face was smeared with blood. ‘I knock the wind out of myself, and you help things along by half-strangling me.’ He looked around. ‘What happened? Where’s Watch?’

Charlie shivered. ‘He fell. The wind got him.’

Tobias’s eyes went cold. ‘Good,’ he said. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and clamped it to his cheek. ‘Let’s get out of here. Before someone stumbles over him and raises the alarm.’

‘O’Dair.’

‘She won’t.’ His lip curled. ‘She don’t want us found alive. If she knows what’s happened the best she can do is hope the roofs kill us as well.’

‘She’ll be disappointed,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s easy from now on.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Tobias managed a weak grin. ‘I’ll believe that when me feet are back on the ground.’

In fifteen minutes he got his wish. They climbed from the lowest roof into an ancient wisteria with branches thick as Charlie’s waist. In seconds, they were on the ground. Dim moonlight washed out of the sky, hinting at the shape of trees and hedges. Tobias did not even pause to get his bearings. He grabbed Charlie by the hand and pulled her after him.

On the roofs, Charlie had been too frightened to notice she was cold. She knew it now. The wind sliced through her jacket. Breathing felt like swallowing lumps of frost. Only Tobias’s hand was warm. It dragged her through a maze of looming dark shapes. Her feet were blind, not knowing where the ground would meet them. His hand kept her upright as they scrambled over weeds and roughly dug ground. She winced at the sound of their feet crunching iced grass, frost-crusted earth, breaking the frozen carcasses of weeds with sharp cracks that reminded her of Watch’s pistol.

‘
Arrrooough!
’ The sound exploded out of the darkness. Tobias froze. ‘
Rooouugh, grrrouugh!
’ Charlie heard the hounds crashing through the undergrowth, rushing towards them. She turned to run, but Tobias grabbed her jacket.

‘Stand still, or they’ll tear your throat out!’ He pulled her to him, holding her so close she could barely breathe. Two enormous shapes bounded into the starlight. Stopped. Sniffed. Whined. ‘Get on out of it, Belle!’ Tobias ordered. ‘Go back to the kennels! Go on!’ The leading
hound whined again, stepped forward, wagging her tail. ‘Get!’ shouted Tobias. Both animals turned and loped off into the darkness.

‘Well, you were wrong,’ Charlie said, a moment later, when she could talk without the scream she had swallowed churning back. ‘They didn’t tear me to pieces.’

‘You’re in my clothes. You smell of me. I helped raise ’em. We were lucky, is all.’ He let go of her, turned his head as though listening. ‘Where’s the guards? The place ought to be crawling with them. ’Specially after all that shooting on the roof. They must’ve heard it. I don’t like it. Something ain’t right.’

‘We can’t go back now!’

She saw the dark outline of his shoulders hunch as he shrugged. Then he grabbed her hand, and they were running again. The ground underfoot grew rougher. Brambles caught at Charlie’s trousers, snagged her feet. Tobias stopped. ‘We’re here. This is where we go out. Grab onto the back of my coat.’ He pushed under the hanging ivy curtain.

Charlie followed, her hands clutching the back of his jacket. She heard the now familiar sounds of lock picking, the faint rumble of oiled hinges rolling open. Tobias pulled her through a low doorway, and she felt cobbles beneath her feet. They were out.

She had to crane her head up to see the stars. They seemed further away. The air felt oilier, damper. It smelt of sewers. The Castle wall was behind them;
another wall loomed in front.

‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ Tobias walked quickly and silently, his head constantly turning as if he were listening. He kept a painful grip on her hand, as though afraid she might suddenly disappear. She found she was glad of it.

Her arms and legs had been powered by sheer terror since O’Dair had pounced on them in the Castle. Now terror had given way to a different sort of fear. Was Tobias’s instinct right? Was Alistair Windlass lying in wait around the next corner? She didn’t even know if they were risking everything on a fool’s errand. The name and address Bettina had given her were two years old. Anything could have happened in that time. She hadn’t allowed herself to doubt until now. Perhaps it was the cold darkness of the night…the horror of what had happened on the roofs… she shuddered. If only she could warm up.

They had left the alley. Buildings crowded both sides of their path, hanging their top floors over a road that seemed too narrow for all but the smallest cart. Tobias threaded their way through a labyrinth of similar streets, pausing from time to time to listen. Their footsteps echoed in the cold air, bouncing off the walls of the houses. He held her hand and led her deeper into the heart of Quale City.

As though in pursuit, the Cathedral bells rang out behind them, and then a single ponderous bass note tolled across the City. One a.m. The houses and shops they had
passed so far had all been dark and shuttered, the streets deserted. But now Tobias led her into alleys so narrow they shut out the stars. And here, despite the late hour and the cold, there
were
people. Charlie’s breath came faster at the sight of them.

The buildings were ramshackle and shabby: tilting, leaning, lit by the yellow glow of the lanterns hanging over the doors of public houses. People lounged beneath these lanterns, faces jaundiced by the light. Men, women, children, nipped and starved-looking, some clearly drunk. Ramshackle and shabby as the buildings. Eyes watched as they passed.

‘Tobias!’ Charlie hissed. Why had he brought her here?

He tightened his grip on her hand. ‘Don’t look no one in the eyes. Don’t stop walking and don’t look scared.’ He was whispering. She could barely hear him over the clattering of their boots on the cobbles. ‘This is Flearside. It ain’t pretty, but it’s the quickest way. We don’t know how much time we got before Windlass finds out we’re gone. We need to get to where we’re going before morning, or he’ll have the Guard and the Army searching.’

He didn’t speak again for over an hour. Flearside slid behind them, and Tobias let go of her hand at last. Alleys became lanes, widened further, straightened into streets. The smell of age, of ancient sewers, damp stone, rotting timber, faded. Charlie looked up, and saw that the stars had returned.

Some time later, the sky in front of them melted from black to purple. It turned a deep rich blue, like velvet. Charlie forgot the ache in her legs. She watched in fascination as the sky glowed, lightened through every shade of blue to palest silver. Fire melted the silver, and the sun rose, red as an orange. Her heart soared with it. They had made it this far. It seemed impossible that they should fail now. Each step must surely bring her closer to that moment when she would see her mother again!

She turned to look at Tobias. He was staring up at the sky. The cut on his cheek had finally stopped bleeding, but his face was the colour of whitewash under the streaks of dried blood, and he had dark circles beneath his eyes. She wondered if she looked as ill and tired. Her head was buzzing with thoughts of her mother, but it was growing more and more difficult to lift her feet from the pavement. It was as though her boots were becoming heavier with each step. She yawned and tried to ignore the blisters rubbing her heels raw.

They were in a terraced street of new-looking houses, built primly of dull red brick. They passed shops, still shuttered and barred against the night. Smoke uncurled from a dozen chimneys, poking dirty grey fingers at the sky. The acrid smell of coal drifted through the air. They passed a flower-seller setting up her stall on a street corner. A milk cart trit-trotted down the gravelled road behind them.

Charlie watched the old man on his cart, the shiny milk
churn lashed on the back. She swallowed and realised her own hunger and thirst had been waiting a long time for her to notice them. Why hadn’t she thought to bring some food? Water, even. As for money, she had never had any – other than the silver thruppence she had found years ago in the crease of one of the library chairs. And Mrs O’Dair had stolen that.

The morning sun had no warmth in it, but the wind had dropped. Hunger burnt like fire in her stomach. She wasn’t used to hunger now. She had forgotten how it gnawed at your insides till you could think of nothing else.

The street narrowed and became a lane. It twisted round a green bit of ground, with an old timber-framed inn on one side of it and a row of tiny cottages on the other. A small wooden bench sat on the edge of the green. Tobias limped to the bench and collapsed onto it. Charlie sat beside him. She leant back and closed her eyes. She groaned aloud with the bliss of not moving. Her legs twitched as they relaxed. She was nearly asleep when Tobias dug his elbow in her ribs. ‘Don’t go nodding off. We need to have our wits about us when we go in.’

She stared at him. ‘Do you mean…?’

‘That’s right. We’re here. I thought you could read.’ He pointed to the sign hanging over the inn door. It showed the picture of a giant pie with the heads and beaks of birds poking through the top crust. Above, in flowing gold and green script, were the words
The Four and
Twenty Blackbirds
.

The lemonade was sweet and sticky. Charlie drained three bottles. She longed for cold, fresh water, but the best to be had in the Four and Twenty Blackbirds was lemonade or ginger beer. She tilted an empty bottle, making the marble stopper clink round and round in the neck, and waited for the fat man to bring their food.

When it came, it was not worth the wait, or Tobias’s two silver sixpences. The bread was oily and hard, the bacon stringy, the fried potatoes slippery and yellowish-green. Charlie wolfed every crumb and wished for more. The inside of the inn was low-ceilinged and dingy. It reeked of stale tobacco. The fat man reappeared and leant on the bar, smoking a cigar and staring at them. They were the only customers. The man removed the cigar, hawked and spat onto the floor. ‘Come far?’ he said.

‘No.’ Tobias nudged Charlie with his foot. She stared at her plate and felt sick. It had nothing – or not much – to do with the food. The place was wrong. The man was wrong. She looked up at his doughy face and felt the last of her hope drain away. This man could have nothing to do with her mother. It had been a fool’s errand after all.

Tobias kicked her harder. ‘Ow!’ She glared at him.

‘Go on,’ he hissed, and she knew she would have to do it. After all they had gone through to get here, she couldn’t quit now. She got to her feet and walked to the bar, gave the man a polite smile. He stared back at her. Blew smoke. Charlie coughed. Her smile grew grim.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for someone by the name of Emma. She left a message that I would always be able to contact her at this inn. Do you know who I mean?’

‘Nope.’

‘Perhaps the owner––’

‘That’s me.’ He chewed on his cigar. ‘If you’re done with that lot I’ll clear away.’ He blew more smoke.

‘Wait,’ said Charlie. ‘This is really important.’

‘Can’t help you,’ said the man. His doughy face was expressionless. He waded from behind the bar and began to stack the dishes. Charlie looked after him, stunned into silence. Her hope of finding her mother had just shattered into a million pieces.

The man balanced the dishes with surprising elegance and sauntered towards the depths of the inn. As he was about to pass into the back room he paused and turned round. ‘Mind you,’ he said, mumbling past the cigar. ‘I only had the place a year.’ He disappeared.

‘Stop!’ screamed Charlie. ‘Who had it before you?’ Clattering and clanking wafted out. The man’s head reappeared.

‘Dead,’ he said, and withdrew like a turtle into its shell.
Charlie gasped. Vaguely, she was aware of Tobias coming to stand beside her.

‘What about next of kin?’ roared Tobias. The man’s head popped out again.

‘Look here,’ he said. ‘I got work to do. Last question. Then you two clear off, or I’ll get the law on you. You can ask your questions of them!’

‘Next of kin?’ asked Tobias again.

‘Widow-woman. Three mile down Froghampton Lane. White cottage. On its own. Can’t miss it. Get lost.’ He poked his head back in and slammed the door behind him.

The cottage stood back from the lane. It had been built at a time when the ground was lower, and now it stood in earth up to its knees. Wisteria and rose trees grew up its front, and the door was painted a soft, earthy green. The knot in Charlie’s chest loosened for the first time since the Four and Twenty Blackbirds.

She took the polished brass knocker in her hand and let it fall onto the plate, twice. Nervous sweat prickled under her arms. Tobias was whistling through his teeth. She was about to scream at him to shut up when the door swung away from her hand. She found herself looking into eyes as blue and bright as flax flowers. They belonged to a white-haired old woman who seemed no taller than she was. Charlie looked down and saw that the woman was standing a foot lower in the ground.

The woman smiled at her surprise. ‘’Tisn’t us who’s sinking,’ she said. ‘It’s you young things that keep growing higher. Come in now, and I’ll give you a sup of milk.’

‘B-but you don’t know who we are,’ Charlie stammered, her face growing warm at the kindness in the woman’s eyes.

‘Do I not?’ said the woman. ‘I think I’ve been waiting for you nearly two years now, m’dear. Come in, do. My bones don’t like the chill.’

Her heart hammering in her chest, Charlie stepped down onto the flagstones. Tobias followed and closed the door behind them. Inside, the cottage was dark, but a cheerful fire glowed in the grate of the large fireplace. The room was simply furnished in an old-fashioned style, with a large wooden settle in front of the fire, and two wooden chairs either side. A child’s stool stood to one side, with a well-loved china doll propped upon it. A hobbyhorse lay on the floor nearby.

‘My granddaughter,’ said the old woman, seeing Charlie glance at the toys. ‘She lives with me, but she’s resting upstairs just now. She’ll not bother us with her chatter. Sit yourselves by the fire, m’dears, while I fetch some milk. Have you eaten this day?’

‘If you can call it that,’ Tobias said with a grin. ‘At the Four and Twenty Blackbirds.’

‘Well, no doubt you’ll survive. You’re young.’ And she disappeared into the back room.

Charlie sank onto a settle which stood with its back to
the door. Tobias collapsed into a chair beside the fire and stretched out his feet with a groan. Charlie was too bubbling over with dread and hope to speak. It was beautifully warm on the settle, and she could feel the stiffness and chill begin to seep out of her.

The woman came back into the room. She handed them each a steaming mug. Charlie breathed in the smell and took a sip. The milk was hot and creamy. She drank deeply. ‘Now,’ said the woman, looking at Charlie. ‘What’s your name, child?’

‘Charlie.’

‘Charlotte,’ corrected the woman. ‘And the rest?’

‘Charlotte Augusta Joanna Hortense.’ She spoke in barely a whisper. The woman looked at her. She was smiling, but Charlie saw a tear glisten a snail’s trail down the soft wrinkles of her face.

‘Then come here and let me kiss you, Charlotte, for I have loved your mother from the moment of her birth.’ When Charlie just stared at her, open mouthed, the woman laughed. She sat beside Charlie and took her face in her hands. She placed a dry, soft kiss on her cheek. ‘I was her nanny, child. Emma Farleigh as was – till I married Mr Goodenough. Emma Goodenough now, even though Mr Goodenough went and died on me, bless him. ‘Let me look at you now!’ Mrs Goodenough studied her. ‘You’ve the look of your father about you, Charlotte. But your mother is there in the shape of your head and your delicate bones. And you never got those curls from
your father. Oh, the trouble I had with your mother’s hair. She was all for cutting it off short, as you have done. But I wouldn’t have that. You must grow yours back, as soon as ever you can. Promise me, now!’

‘I told her not to cut it,’ Tobias said.

‘I like it short,’ said Charlie.

‘Stubborn, like her, I see.’ Mrs Goodenough turned to Tobias. ‘And who might you be, young man?’

‘Tobias Petch, at your service.’ He bobbed his head.

Charlie couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Where is she? Mrs Goodenough––’

‘Emma.’

‘Emma, then. Do you know where Mother is?’

Mrs Goodenough’s face grew serious. ‘I haven’t heard from her for some time now. Not that that’s unusual. Your mother’s led a strange life these past years. I know little about it. But she sends me messages from time to time. Telling me where she is. I’ll give you the last.’

She got to her feet and walked to the fireplace. She reached up into it and pulled something out. She brought it back to the settle, and Charlie saw that it was a small metal casket. Mrs Goodenough took a key from a chain around her neck and opened the casket. A folded piece of paper lay inside. ‘Caroline hoped you might come looking for her,’ she said. ‘If ever you did, I was to give you her latest address. This is it.’

She handed the paper to Charlie. The fire had warmed it, and it fluttered like a bird in her hands. Charlie
unfolded it and read the number of a house and the name of a street. ‘I don’t know where this is,’ she said.

‘It’s in the City, my love,’ said Emma Goodenough. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘Let me look.’ Tobias took the paper.

‘Do you know where it is?’ Charlie asked.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I know. Flearside.’

Charlie stared at him in horror. Surely her mother wouldn’t be living in that nightmare place?

Mrs Goodenough wanted them to stay the night to rest, but Charlie would not. ‘In that case, Madam Stubborn, you will let me give you the money for a hansom cab. None of that! You’ll still have to walk five miles to find one, child.’

In the end, they walked six. It was nearly four in the afternoon as they climbed wearily into the cab, and the short winter day was dying. Charlie stared over the horse’s ears, watching the sky fire crimson, then purple, then ultraviolet, then sink into a moonless black as the cab clattered and jolted slowly through the City. She fell asleep.

It seemed only minutes later Tobias was shaking her. ‘Come on, Charlie. Wake up. We’re here.’

‘So quickly?’ she muttered, the flood of excitement making her heart thump and waking her all at once.

‘Quick? Slowest cab this side of four counties. It’s gone eight o’clock!’

Charlie jumped down into the cold, black night and
watched Tobias pay out a half-crown and a sixpence into the cabbie’s hand. ‘Use that and get yourself a horse that’s alive!’

‘None of your cheek, lad! Where’m I to get good horseflesh? Them as ain’t in the Army’s needed on the land. The rest been et. Count yourself lucky to travel behind a horse at all!’ He clambered back onto his box and clopped off into the night.

‘Been quicker to walk. And a sight cheaper,’ grumbled Tobias.

‘Don’t worry. We’re here now. Where’s the house?’

They wandered along the street, reading the house numbers by the fitful light of the few street lamps that had been lit.

The houses were poor, thin things. Narrow-walled. Built cheaply in a poor, thin alley. ‘This one,’ hissed Tobias. Charlie ran to him. The windows were dark. Perhaps she had gone to bed. Perhaps she only lodged here. They would have to wake the house. ‘Go on, then,’ said Tobias.

There was no doorbell. No knocker. Charlie rapped on the door. Waited. Nothing happened. She knocked louder. She thudded on the door with her fist.

A window in the house next door crashed open. ‘Clear off!’ shouted a man’s voice. ‘They’ve flitted!’ The window banged shut.

‘Move over,’ whispered Tobias. He dug in his pocket. The lock clicked open almost at once. Charlie went in
first. The only light was from the street outside. ‘I don’t reckon they’re on the gas here,’ he said.

‘I’ll find the kitchen and look for candles and matches,’ said Charlie.

The kitchen would be at the back. She felt her way down the narrow hall, blundered into a door and opened it. The curtainless window let in a faint light. Enough to see a bare table, a cold, unlit range, a shabby dresser, its shelves bare. Charlie went to the dresser and pulled open drawer after drawer. She found a few supplies: string, sealing wax, stamps, a broken toasting fork. In the last drawer, beneath a crumpled cloth, she found matches. A single candle stood on the mantel over the range. With shaking fingers, she lit it and went back to the hall.

Tobias shut the door. He shook his head. ‘The front room’s empty. Bare as a beggar’s bottom. Sorry, Charlie. Looks like she’s gone.’

‘I’ll check upstairs.’ She was amazed at how steady her voice sounded. Inside she was all in pieces. She walked up the stairs slowly, shielding the candle. There were two rooms at the top of the house. Mean, narrow rooms with mean, narrow fireplaces. They were both empty. It was over. It had all been for nothing. Charlie reached up a shaking hand to brush away a tear and heard Tobias come into the room.

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You all right?’ She nodded but didn’t turn around. ‘We’d best get you back to Mrs Goodenough,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to sleep here
tonight and get an early start. Let’s see if there’s any coal in the lean-to. Come on, Charlie, best to keep busy. She’ll be in touch again. You’ve got to wait is all.’

He was right. But she had been so positive they would find her mother tonight. And now… She let Tobias lead her to the stairs. Tears blurred her eyes again, and she reached to wipe them away. She only knew something was wrong when his fingers dug into her arm.

Alistair Windlass stood at the foot of the stairs. He was too tall and elegant for the narrow hall. He had taken off his top hat and held it carelessly in a gloved hand. A brass lantern stood against the wall. He smiled up at them. ‘I hope you have enjoyed your little adventure,’ he said, ‘because it is at an end.’

‘You…
bastard
!’ Tobias pushed past her, lunging down the steps. He immediately slid to a stop, grabbing the railing to keep himself from falling all the way to the bottom. Charlie leant to look past him and saw what had stopped him. Windlass had taken his other hand out of his overcoat pocket. It held a pistol.