Catherine Fisher: Darkwater

“There’s worse,” Martha said darkly. “Besides, it would kill your father. The last of the Trevelyans in a dame school is one thing. In the workhouse is another.” Taking the comb back she said quietly, “He’s been awake a while.” Sarah paused, reluctant. Then she went through the door in the corner.

Her father’s room was always dim. He lay on his side, facing away from her, as if that helped him to breathe. When he turned, his face was clammy and pale, his hair whiter than the pillow.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said.

“I’m off to work.”

“Is it today?” he wheezed.

She cursed herself for telling him. He’d probably been brooding on it all night.

“Is what?”

“You know what.” He struggled to sit up; she had to pull the thin bolster up behind him. “All the grand visitors. All the lords and ladies. Coming to inspect you, look down their noses at you.”

Sarcasm made him cough. She poured the medicine hastily into the blue cup and helped him drink it. When he lay back she said, “They won’t look at me. I’m no one. And I’m late.”

“Mind you take no nonsense. They’ll know you. If your grandfather hadn’t gambled it all away, we’d be the ones being bowed and scraped to, inspecting schools, giving prizes, my lord this, my lady that.”

“Yes, I know,” she said impatiently. He was back on the old subject, the old grievance. It haunted him, always. She edged away.

“It’s money, Sarah. That’s all they’ve got. You’ve got family. A pedigree going back to the Norman kings. They can’t say that. Not that fat mayor or that interfering old bag from the Grange . . .”

“Lie still, Papa,” she muttered. “I’ve got to go.”

As she reached the door he caught his breath. Blue at the lips, he gasped, “I suppose he’ll be there.”

“Who?”

“That stinking upstart. The one who stole our house.”

All down the lane she cursed herself with irritated names. It was bad enough that she had to skivvy for Old Mother Hubbard in her paltry little school without him imagining all the gentry of the parish gossiping about her.

“That’s Sarah Trevelyan.”

“Not the Trevelyans?”

“The ones who lost all their money.”

“The ones who lost Darkwater Hall.”

It was late. She ran, around the corner and into the stone-walled lane that trickled down to the sea, a squall of salty rain slapping her in the face. Leaping every puddle, she climbed the stile and squelched over Martinmas Field, the sheep scattering with low bleats. On the far side the wall had slipped, and she paused on the wobbling stones at the top to catch her breath.

And saw what she saw every morning.

Darkwater Hall rose on the cliff top of High Bluff. Turreted and bleak, its facade of gothic windows caught the blear light and gleamed, facing out to sea. Down its roofs and gables the rain ran in sheets, and the peculiarly grotesque gargoyles that her great-grandfather had insisted on in his eccentric plan spat and grinned evilly into the tangle of gardens below.

From here, she could just see the main door. Outside it, a carriage had pulled up; a sleek, black equipage with two gray horses, each blinkered. They pawed the ground restlessly, and as she watched, a hunched footman came down from the house and opened the carriage door. She watched, intent.

The house—their house—had long been empty. Lord Azrael had arrived suddenly, last week. Martha had gossiped about it to Jack, always stopping when Sarah came in. How her father had found out, she didn’t know.

A man stepped down. She was surprised; she’d expected someone old, withered and ugly. But this man was young, dark haired with a neat, barely visible clipped beard. He walked with a limp, and his frockcoat looked expensive. At the top of the steps he paused. Then he turned and looked up.

She ducked, wobbling.

The dark man didn’t move. Ignoring the horses and the impatient footman, he stared out across the fields, the wind blowing his hair. As if he knew someone was watching him.

Sarah shivered. Rain ran down her neck. For a second she felt as if she were balancing not on a wall but on the edge of some terrible pit, and if she moved she would plummet, head over heels into darkness.

Then the new owner of Darkwater turned and went inside his house.

The giddiness passed. The stones slewed sideways. She jumped, splashed puddle water up her stocking, and ran. In the distance a cracked bell was clanking relentlessly. By the time she got to the school she was breathless, the crust jammed unnoticed in her pocket, her left foot soaked from a leak in her boot. Praying they hadn’t gone in yet, she tore around the great oak tree and flung herself in at the gate.

The courtyard was empty.

“Blast!” she hissed.

two

She turned the knob quietly.

Inside the tiny porch, shawls and caps dripped. Immediately the smell of the place enfolded her, and she frowned. She hated this smell. Damp clothes, smoke, polish, sweat. And fear.

She creaked the door open and went in.

“So! You’ve finally decided to arrive!” Mrs. Hubbard was squeezed into the pulpit of her desk, a dark ominous whale of a woman, pinned and brooched into a vast starched gown of bombazine black. Her best, Sarah realized.

“I’m sorry,” she said tightly. “My father—”

“Your father is a convenient excuse too frequently employed.” Mrs. Hubbard raised a magnificent lorgnette, which magnified her small black eyes, and looked Sarah up and down in distaste. “Dear me. You could have made more effort in your dress. I wasn’t expecting flounces and bows, but even a family as horridly reduced as yours should have managed better. You’re a disgrace, dearie. What are you?”

“A disgrace,” Sarah muttered automatically.

“This is an important day for me.” Mrs. Hubbard stabbed a pointing fingernail at the class; they seemed to huddle down further without even seeing it. “My establishment is noted, noted, mind you, for its discipline. On the day when my patrons inspect it, you turn up looking like a workhouse brat. There are plenty of others who could have this situation.” She opened her desk, took a pinch of snuff, and sniffed it daintily. “I ain’t too fussy, dear, about who cleans the privies. Now. Stove first. Then sweep.”

Sarah turned and went for the bucket in silent relief. Old Mother Hubbard must be preoccupied. Otherwise the tirade would have gone on and on.

Above the smeared mirror next to the world map a notice said CLEAN HANDS REVEAL A CLEAN HEART in smug letters. She ignored them and hastily brushed wisps of her hair back, seeing her red face, chapped from the wind. In the back row Elsie Tate gave her a spiteful glance. Elsie was one of the favored pupils; her mother paid extra fees for her little darling to learn deportment and dancing. Watching her stagger around on Thursday afternoons with a pile of books on her head, Sarah thought grimly, was almost worth all the rest. The dame school was one dingy room. Tilted ranks of ancient tables descended in three tiers to an open space where Mrs. Hubbard’s pulpit rose like a tower. The desk had a power of its own. Even when she tottered down from it—which was rare—it cast its dark shadow of fear. The class was terrorized by its silence.

The front row was six tiny boys and an even tinier girl, who never spoke. Today she was crying again, Sarah noticed, the tears hurriedly mopped into her sleeve before they touched the precious slate. No one took any notice.

“Class.” Mrs. Hubbard polished her lorgnette in gloved fingers. “Gibbon. From yesterday. Begin.”

Hands reached for chalk. The morning exercise was always the same—the painstaking copying of Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire— probably the only book on the shelf, Sarah thought sourly, that the old bag ever bothered to open. The children’s chilblained fingers made careful copperplate on the slates, the older few in the back dipping pens into tiny inkpots, in agonies not to blot the cheap yellow paper.