There came a knock at the door. His manservant, Bailey, betrayed no alarm at his changed appearance. The man—tall, bony, grim—merely nodded to him and held out a towel as if he had been summoned for that very purpose and Berghast took it and turned back.
You are going mad. He smiled to his reflection.
His reflection—hairless, blood-speckled where the razor had cut too deep—smiled back.
He caught Bailey’s face in the mirror, watching. “We must be like water, Bailey,” he murmured. “We must be clean, and empty.”
He went back into his study, his manservant silent. It was then Berghast saw the door to the tunnels was open. Lurking in it was a small figure, ragged, with bloodied fingernails, his black hair wild. A blue shine seeping up out of his skin. He could have been standing there a long time. He could have been standing there but an instant. It was all just exactly as Henry Berghast had dreamed it would be.
The shining boy.
Marlowe.
Marlowe had come back.
* * *
Abigail Davenshaw, asleep in her rooms, woke suddenly. She went to the opened window with her heart in her throat and she felt the afternoon light fall across her face.
The child was back. Marlowe.
He had returned.
She knew it to be true. She was trembling. Outside, the grounds of Cairndale were quiet, the air tinged with a distant smoke like burning leaves. She could smell the loch below the manor. But there were no voices, no students calling to each other, no signs of life. She had dreamed little Marlowe so clearly and she knew somehow that it was not a dream, not really, and she had dreamed other things also. Rarely did she dream in images but this day she had. If it resembled sight, she could not say. But she had dreamed a man striding across a field in a hat and cloak and she’d known it to be Jacob Marber with that same clarity and she had dreamed flames and heard weeping and the weeping had been her own.
She knew she must go to Dr. Berghast, tell him what she had dreamed. She couldn’t imagine doing so, it seemed so foolish. Forgive me, Doctor, I have been having bad dreams.… And yet there was a fierce conviction in her that filled her with certainty. Go, she must. She put on her shawl and carefully ran her hands over her dress and her hair, smoothing out any strays, and then she tied the blindfold at her eyes and picked up the birch switch for speed and opened her door.
There were presences in the hallway, hurrying past. She could tell at once by the sound of their footsteps and the smells, like of dried cotton and the acrid stink of urine, that it was some of the old residents, the ones she thought of as ghosts.
“Miss Davenshaw,” said a shaking voice. It was Mr. Bloomington, the ancient talent who lived down the corridor. “You would be best, my dear, to stay in your rooms. This is no time to be going out. We have told Mr. Smythe the same.”
She bit back her pride and turned her face in his direction. “And why ever not?” she said. “You seem like you could use assistance, sir.”
She could hear his labored breathing. It sounded like fear.
“He’s back, Miss Davenshaw. He’s come back. He’s got through the east wards and is on his way here, Lord only knows how. The children … the children must be kept safe. We are all going out to meet him.”
For a brief confused moment she thought he was talking about Marlowe. But Mr. Bloomington must have seen something in her face, for he added, in his croaking voice: “It is young Jacob, Miss Davenshaw. Jacob Marber is coming across the fields.”
She felt the shock of it. “What will you do?” she whispered.
“What we should have done long ago,” said the old man. “We will fight.”
39
THE RISING DARK
It was the stillness on the long crooked road to Cairndale that made Margaret Harrogate afraid.
The quiet of it.
The road meandered past stands of trees and ribbons of plowed field and yet in the fading light she saw no crows, no creatures, nothing. Even the bushes and the twisted oaks seemed to shrink back away from the road, to seek out the coming darkness. Their hired carriage rattled on.
Miss Quicke’s eyes were closed. She held the purring keywrasse on her lap, stroking its fur distractedly, as if it were an innocent, as if it were a pet. Margaret had seen cats with their eyes creased shut in pleasure and a quick glance might have made any think that was all this was, not a monstrous thing from a different world, four eyes where there ought to be two. Not a weapon. But that’s what it was: a tool for killing. Margaret saw the gentleness in Miss Quicke’s fingers and she scowled and looked out through the dusty window. Her own hands gripped her knees as if to hold her legs straight. She disliked immensely the feeling of powerlessness that was in her but she told herself it didn’t matter. Prideful, she thought. That is what you are, Margaret. What would good Mr. Harrogate say to see you now?