Catherine Fisher: Darkwater

“Of course I did. You were the master’s daughter.”

“I still am.”

“Things have changed since then.” Martha took her handkerchief out and wrapped it tightly around her finger. Finally she said, “Don’t make your father’s mistake, Sarah. Don’t cling on to the old ways, thinking one day they’ll come back. They won’t. There’s no house, no money. You’re someone else now, as poor and downtrodden as the rest of us.”

“No!” Angrily Sarah turned her back. “I’m still a Trevelyan. So is Papa. We don’t belong here.”

Martha sucked the thread and pushed it through the needle’s eye. “The Trevelyans are finished,” she said firmly. “And most people round here are only too glad.”

She tried everything. The old fishwives at the harbor laughed in her face, and the stinking piles of fish scales made her feel sick. At the factory with its smoking furnaces and dark gates she had to wait an hour before the foreman gave one look at her and said: “No. Get lost.”

She went for service jobs in two houses; in both she had to wait hours before being turned away.

The money was all gone. Her father’s cough was worse. He asked for white bread, medicine, a tot of brandy, peevishly demanding how he was supposed to exist like this. By Thursday the stock of sea-coal was used up.

“We’ll burn seaweed tomorrow,” Martha said grimly, brushing the dust up and sprinkling it on the fire.

The last, lowest humiliation was to go before the Poor Committee. She’d die first, she told herself, but she went, and then couldn’t bring herself to go in, running away from the door, hot with shame.

There was nothing else to do and no one else to go to. And she was scared. So when Friday came, finally, bitterly, she wrapped the moth-eaten shawl around her shoulders and set off for Darkwater Hall.

The drive was over a mile long and deeply rutted. She trudged up it wearily, avoiding the puddles. Overhead, the trees met in a tangle of stark bare twigs, and on each side the neglected undergrowth of yew and hazel and rowan grew so thick that in places it almost closed the track. The afternoon was bleak. In the bare elms jackdaws karked.

She was cold and uneasy. What sort of recompense was he thinking of ? A job? She frowned. If he thought she’d be some skivvy in a house that should have been her own . . . Then she stumbled, and kicked the stone angrily. If he did, she had no choice.

The Hall rose up before her, its windows lightless. It was a huge building of some granite that was almost black, with awkward clusters of turrets and gables and under them a plainer, older facade. There were strange tales about the house. Not far off the river Darkwater disappeared underground; the country people said it ran under the very depths of the Hall, a roaring underground flood plunging down through some vast chasm into the depths of the earth. The river certainly went somewhere. Only a trickle ran onto the beach.

By the time she had crunched up the carriage sweep, the sleet had begun to fall, faint and hissing. Behind her a glimmer of red lit the sky. She was soaked and hungry, hair plastered to her head; as she came under the front porch the gargoyles and monstrous griffins stared down, wide-eyed.

“Yes,” she snapped at them. “The Trevelyans are back.” She should go around to the servants’ entrance, but she wouldn’t. Half daring, half annoyed, she climbed the steps and pulled the bell.

It clanked.

Feeling small, she waited.

In the stained-glass windows the coat of arms of her family was dim in the gathering gloom. Falling leaves pattered on the stones. Beyond that the twilight was silent; so silent that a fox loped around the corner of the porch and peered at her with shrewd eyes. For a moment she wanted desperately to turn and run, down the drive, home, but there was nothing to run to but misery. Besides, it was too late.

Someone was unbolting the door.

The rattle made the fox slink into the bushes. Sarah turned, lifting her chin.

A small manservant opened the door. His shoulders were stooped, his hair lank and greasy. “What?” he said brusquely.

Sarah drew herself up. “I’m here to see Lord Azrael. My name is Sarah Trevelyan.”

The man shrugged. “’Imself’s choosy who ’e sees. Got an appointment ’ave you?”

“He asked me to come.” She wished she hadn’t burned the card. It would have been good to flourish it in his face.

The man cocked his head slightly, as if listening to a voice she couldn’t hear. Then he sighed and stepped back. “Get yerself in.”

She walked up the steps into an octagonal hall. It was floored with black-and-white tiles, and she recognized the smell of it at once. It surged back at her from an immense distance, out of years of forgetfulness. Damp rooms, polish, cedarwood, the pressed petals of a hundred lost summers. As she breathed it in, tears pricked her eyes, sudden and hot. She blinked them away in astonishment.

“Sit yerself down.” The servant indicated a chair with a grumpy wave. “I’ll see if ’is lordship’s ’ome.” He crossed the hall, opened double doors and went through, closing them with both hands, giving her a shrewd, sardonic look. It reminded her of the fox. Standing there, her skirt dripping into a pool, she knew for the first time just how far her family had fallen. Martha’s cottage could fit twice into just this hall. The price of one of the paintings would feed the village for weeks. She looked up at their faces; men and women, stiff in gorgeous robes, gazing at her haughtily as if she were something far beneath them. The Trevelyans. Hard as nails.

She didn’t sit. She would stain the striped yellow chair. Even that seemed a precious thing, amazingly clean. There was a row of sculptures; she wandered along, looking at them. Roman. Or Greek. She wasn’t sure. And how could one man live here on his own? With all his tenants crammed into squalid cottages like Martha’s? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And yet she envied him.

The door to her right opened; the servant came through like a shadow.

“Aren’t you the lucky one?” he said nastily. He scraped a match and lit a tall candle in a silver stick. “Come up, ’e says. As if I ’aven’t better things to do.”

He led her down a corridor to a great wooden staircase, its wide steps carpeted with softest wool. Her feet sank into luxury. Above were masses of clustering shapes that hung from the ceiling in the dimness, the vast chandeliers of her dreams. Drafts clinked their crystals; she felt their weight above her as she followed the small bent back, seeing the dandruff on his greasy collar.

The candle flickered along a landing, through a door and a lobby lined with blue-and-white vases, to a wooden double door. The servant glanced at her and then knocked.

Someone murmured from inside.

The manservant opened the door. “’Ere she is. Beats me what you want with ’er.”

Surprised, Sarah stared at him. Then she straightened her soaked shawl and walked in.

Red light blinded her. It was streaming in through the high windows, a fiery glow like a vast furnace. For a second she almost felt it was burning her face, its heat roaring and crackling in the room. And then she saw that the great salon faced west, and far out there over the sea the sun was setting, smoldering like a hot coal.

A fire burned in the grate. Sitting in a long chair by the window, his leg propped on a footstool and a black cat curled peacefully in his lap, was Lord Azrael. As he turned his head, his dark face was lit by the flames.

“Sarah!” He stood, the cat jumping down with a mew of discontent. “I’m so glad. I’ve been waiting for you to come.”