Бриджет Коллинз – The Binding (страница 9)

They were trying to tell me something. I didn’t know what I was frightened of: but whatever it was, it lived in Seredith’s locked room. When I woke and couldn’t get back to sleep I sat by my window, letting the sharp night air dry the clamminess of my skin, and tried to understand; but no matter how much I turned it over in my head, no matter how much I tried to see past the fear, there was nothing except Lucian Darnay, and that half-glimpsed room. Whatever happened in there, it seeped out, setting my teeth on edge, bleeding into my dreams.

I asked Seredith about him one evening when I was scouring a pan and she was making stew. She didn’t look up, but her fingers stumbled and knocked half an onion on to the floor. She bent slowly to pick it up. ‘Try not to think about Lucian Darnay,’ she said.

‘Why won’t you show me his book? All I’m learning is this endless finishing work, I thought I was supposed to …?’ She rinsed the onion and went on chopping it. ‘Seredith! When are you going to—’

‘I’ll teach you more soon,’ she said, pushing past me into the pantry. ‘When you’re well again.’

But day after day passed, until I was nearly as strong as I’d ever been, and she still didn’t tell me.

Autumn changed into winter. In our day-by-day life – the monotonous, meditative routine of work and food and sleep – I lost track of time. The days rolled round like wheels, full of the same chores and the same hours of finishing work, marbling paper, paring leather or gilding the edge of a dummy block. Mostly, my practice-pieces ended up in the old barrel Seredith used as a waste-bin; but even when Seredith stared down at one of the papers and said, without smiling, ‘Keep that one,’ it went into the plan chest and stayed there, out of sight. Nothing ever seemed to get used. I almost stopped wondering when they’d be good enough, or when I’d see a real book; and maybe that was what Seredith wanted. In the still silence of the workshop I concentrated on small things: the weight of the burnisher, the squeak of beeswax under my thumb. One morning I looked out and saw, with a shock, that the reeds were poking through a thin layer of snow. I’d noticed the cold, of course, but in a distant practical way that made me move my work closer to the stove and dig out a pair of fingerless gloves. Now it hit me: I’d passed months here, nearly a quarter of a year. Soon it would be the Turning. I took a deep, chilly breath, wondering how – if – we would celebrate it, alone in the middle of nowhere. It hurt to imagine my family surrounded by evergreens and mistletoe, toasting absent friends in mulled ale … But Seredith hadn’t said anything about letting me go home, and if deep snow fell the roads would be impassable. Not that anyone had come, since Lucian Darnay, except the weekly post. The post-cart still stopped at our door, and the driver scuttled inside to bolt a mug of hot tea before he went on; until one day, a few weeks later, the clouds were so low and the air so ominously stagnant that he shook his head when I invited him inside. He threw a packet of letters and a bag of supplies onto the ground at my feet as quickly as he could before huddling into his nest of blankets. ‘Going to snow again, boy,’ he said. ‘Not sure when I’ll be back. See you in the spring, maybe.’

‘The spring?’

A sharp blue eye glinted at me from the space between his hat and scarf. ‘Your first time out here, isn’t it? Don’t worry. She always makes it through.’

With that he clicked to the shivering horse, and jolted off down our path towards the road. I stood there watching until he was out of sight, in spite of the cold.

If I’d known … I racked my brain to remember what I’d said in my letter to my family – the last one this year … But what would I have added? Wished them a happy Turning, that was all. In a way I was glad that home felt so far away, that I could stand there and feel nothing, as if the freezing air had numbed my mind as well as my fingers.

A fit of trembling seized me, and I went inside.

He was right. It snowed that night, sieving it down in a silent blizzard, and when we woke the road was hardly a ripple in the whiteness. I was meant to light the stove first thing, but that morning when I walked into the workshop Seredith was already awake and at her bench. She was watching a bird hop and flutter outside, leaving neat tracks like letters. A drift of flour from the paste she’d been mixing made it look as if the snow had come through the window.

She’d lit the stove, but I shivered. She looked round. ‘There’s tea ready. Oh, and is there anything you need? I’m writing a list for the next order from Castleford.’

‘The postman said he wouldn’t be back till spring.’ I was so stiff with cold that I nearly spilt the tea when I tried to pour it.

‘Oh, Toller’s a fool. It’s too early for winter. This will thaw in a few days.’ She smiled as I glanced involuntarily at the bank of snow that rose halfway up the far window. ‘Trust me. The real snows won’t be here until after the Turning. There’s enough time to prepare.’

I nodded. That meant I could write another letter home, after all; but what would I say?

‘Go out to the storehouse and take stock.’ I looked at the glittering snowdrifts and a thin chill ran up my back. She added, ‘It’ll be cold,’ with a glint in her eye that was half mockery, half sympathy. ‘Wrap up well.’

It wasn’t too bad when I got down to it. I had to move boxes and sacks and huge jars to see what was there, and after a little while I was panting with exertion and too warm to keep my hat on. I dumped the sack I’d been moving and leant against the side of the doorway to catch my breath. I let my eyes linger on the woodpile, wondering if it would be enough to get us through winter. If it wasn’t, somehow I’d have to find more; but in this wide bare landscape there was no wood to gather or trees to cut down. A cloud had come up to cover the sun, and a breeze whined in my ears like someone sharpening a knife a long way away. It was going to snow again. Surely Seredith was wrong about the thaw.

I should have got back to work. But something caught my eye – something too far away to see clearly, struggling along the faint line of road like an insect stuck in white paint. At last the dark blot grew into the shape of a horse, hock-high in the snow, with a fat hunchbacked speck of a rider. No – two riders, looking as small as children until I realised that the horse was a huge shaggy Shire horse. Two women, the one behind straight-backed, the other sagging in front and slipping sideways at every step. Long before I could see their faces clearly, their voices carried across the snow: a desperate mutter of encouragement, and above that the thin desolate keening I’d thought was the wind.

When they stopped in front of the house, and one woman dismounted awkwardly into the snowdrift, I should have gone to help her. Instead I watched as she struggled, coaxing and tugging and finally heaving the other woman off the horse as if she was a doll. The shrill wailing went on, high, inhuman, only hiccupping and starting again when the women stumbled on their way to the front door. I caught a glimpse of wide glazed eyes and loose tangled hair and lips bitten bloody; then they were huddled in the porch, and the bell jangled off-key.

I turned back to the ordered familiarity of the storeroom; but now there were shadows lurking behind every pile and looking out at me from every jar. Who would drag themselves through this snow, unless they were desperate? Desperate for a binding … Like Lucian Darnay. But what could a book do? What could Seredith do?

In a moment she would open the door to the women. Then she’d take them through the workshop to the locked room …

Before I had time to think I had crossed the little yard and skirted the side of the house so I could slip inside by the back door. I paused in the passageway and listened.

‘Bring her in.’ Seredith’s voice.

‘I’m trying!’ Breathless, a village accent, stronger than mine. ‘I can’t get her to – come on, Milly, please—’

‘Didn’t she want to come? If she doesn’t agree, I can’t—’

‘Oh!’ A brief laugh, sharp with bitterness and fatigue. ‘Oh, she wanted to come, all right. Begged and begged, even in this snow. And then half a mile down the road she went like a rag doll – and she won’t stop this bloody noise—’

‘Very well.’ Seredith said it without heat, but it was enough to cut her off. The wailing went on, sobbing and quavering like a trickle of water. ‘Milly? Come here. Come inside. I can help you. That’s good, now your other foot. Good girl.’

Something about her tone reminded me of when I’d first come here. I turned my head and focused on the wall in front of my face. A thin crust of windblown snow clung to the rough plaster, as intricate and granular as salt crystals.

‘That’s better. That’s good.’ It was like Pa, murmuring to an edgy mare.

‘Thank goodness.’ The woman’s voice cracked. ‘She’s gone mad. You’ll make her better. Please.’

‘If she asks me to. There we go, Milly. I’ve got you now.’