Metro Winds

4.

I went to the kitchen and bade the cook prepare food for a journey, while the policeman took Nullah to the train station. I ordered a maid to find the trunk of winter clothes we had brought with us. Mine were too small, but I took out a heavy gown and a cloak of Mama’s, as well as boots, muff and hat, weeping a little when I saw how well they fitted me. Upon his return, the inspector accepted one of the heavy coats that had belonged to my father, for Mama had kept these as well. How strange it was to see them inhabited again. I sat down to write a letter to my stepfather, explaining what I meant to do.

‘Love will lead me to Rose or to death,’ I wrote baldly, then I sent my love to my stepfather and signed my name, sealing the silky sheet of writing paper into an envelope upon which I wrote his name. I propped it alongside my stepfather’s pipe stand so that he would find it when he reached for the pipe before supper that evening. He would have to summon a maid to read it to him.

I felt numb with fear of what I meant to do, but I was resolved. Suddenly it seemed to me that my whole life had been shaped in order that I might enter the winter park. The policeman was not forcing me; he was merely an instrument of fate. I felt the heat of the day beating on my back as we crossed from the apartment to the line of ghost trees, but the cold from the winter park raked my bare cheeks.

‘Do you believe what Nullah said?’ I asked the inspector when we stood at the edge of the park. ‘Do you believe the park is not part of this land?’

‘I believe this will bring us to the place where your mother’s body was found,’ he said.

I followed him through the ghost trees and the moment we were on the other side of them, the heat and noise of the town was cut off and a thick, soft silence fell about me. I looked at the policeman, but his expression had not changed so I knew he did not feel the cold as I felt it. Indeed, his forehead shone with perspiration, for he had no need of the coat he wore.

I looked down and saw two sets of footprints in the snow, one belonging to an adult and the other to a child. They were as fresh as if Mama and Rose had just walked there, and yet the policeman did not look at them. He was clearly finding his way by memory. I turned my attention back to the footprints that progressed side by side into the winter park, and knew that Rose had not come in first after all, nor Mama. They had walked side by side, almost keeping pace, save for the additional skip Rose had made every few steps to keep up. My heart ached at the memory of the jerk she had given my hand whenever she had executed that little skip. And then we were entering a clearing. I stopped, seeing the unmistakeable imprint of Mama’s form.

I was not aware of having cried out, but the policeman looked at me sharply. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.

I pointed to the outline and for a fleeting moment I saw the red earth and the leaf litter among twisting tree roots that the policeman was seeing. I said, ‘I can see the outline of where Mama lay, in the snow. I see Rose’s footprints leading away!’

‘In the snow,’ he repeated. ‘Can you see the two sets of footprints leading to where the body lay?’

I nodded. ‘And I see Rose’s footprints going away there.’ I pointed deeper into the park.

‘You can see her footprints in the snow?’ he asked and I nodded. ‘My people saw scuff marks and footprints in the dust when the body was first found, but those have long since faded.’ He gave me a considering look and then pointed some way to the left of the prints. ‘You see where the body lay there?’

‘It was there,’ I said, pointing to the depression in the snow. Then I saw the look on his face and realised he had been testing me. ‘Did you think I would lie?’ I asked.

He frowned. ‘You would be surprised what people make themselves see when they are desperate. Let’s find out where the prints lead.’

I did not move. ‘I think if you and the others could not see Rose’s footprints leading away from Mama’s body, you won’t be able to go with me if I follow them.’

He did not look at the ground but into my eyes. ‘I see you,’ he said. ‘I will follow you.’

Very deliberately, he reached out and took my arm. I did not know if he was humouring me, but I was glad he was by my side. I took a deep breath and set off following Rose’s footprints, comforted by the weight of his hand.

We had not gone far before it was clear she had walked an erratic zigzag path, which always seemed to change direction at the foot of a tree. Almost all of the trees about us now were pine trees or unfamiliar black-trunked skeletons with complex many-tined branches.

‘Could she be playing a game?’ said the policeman.

I shook my head. ‘I think she is following something. A squirrel maybe.’

‘A squirrel?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s hard to imagine a child running after some small animal if her mother had just died. Maybe your mother didn’t lie down until after Rose left the clearing.

I said nothing. The policeman was still trying to fit what we were doing and learning here into his world, and yet he was with me as we went on, following the steps that continued their erratic progress until they came to a stream running black as ink through the whiteness. I stopped.

‘The footsteps stop at the edge of the stream,’ I said.

‘There is a stream?’ asked the policeman. He was gazing about in the same vague, groping way as my stepfather. I noticed that the sweat had dried on his forehead and he was holding the edges of the coat together.

‘What do you see?’ I asked him curiously.

‘Only the mist,’ he said.

I stared at him. Then I looked around at the glowing white snow, radiant in the sun whose light reached us but not its heat. The pine trees wore shapeless hoods of glistening snow, and the black-trunked trees were sugar frosted. The park ran away out of sight, still and snowy, seemingly empty of life. I could hear nothing save the trickle of the stream whose current must be swift enough to keep it from icing over, and the occasional creak of a branch or the huffing sigh of snow slipping to the ground. There was no birdcall, nor the chatter of squirrels foraging, nor the delicate nibbling of deer grazing. But I could hear the faint soughing made by the wind in the bare branches of the highest trees. I sniffed, but my nose was too cold to smell anything.

‘I think,’ the policeman said presently, ‘that I can hear water, but it sounds far away.’

I said nothing, for I had remembered something. Once, when Rose had spoken of entering the park, she had mentioned a tower. I had taken no notice of it at the time, but I ought to have done, for Rose was not in the habit of inventing things. I concentrated upon the memory and it grew clearer.

‘It is not so late,’ Rose had said. ‘By dusk we could be at the tower.’

‘There is a tower,’ I said. ‘I can’t see it, but I have just remembered that Rose once mentioned it. She wanted to go there.’

I began to walk, and the policeman followed, still holding my elbow.

We walked for several hours, always moving uphill and mostly in silence, then the policeman stopped. ‘I still can’t see snow, but my blood is turning to ice,’ he said. He sounded shaken but not afraid. I reminded myself that he had summoned Nullah, which told me his mind was not limited by reason and logic; even so, I hesitated a moment before drawing my elbow from his grasp. He did not vanish as I had half expected. He slipped off the pack he carried and got out the thermos of hot chocolate that the cook had made. His hands shook as he poured it into the enamelled cups and I saw that his fingers were white as marble. When he drank, his teeth chattered a little against the rim of the mug.

‘Why aren’t you married?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘I never married because as far as I could see, marriage was the end of the mystery of love. Or the beginning of the end. And I like mysteries.’

‘But you are a policeman, so you must like solving mysteries, which ends them. That is a paradox.’

‘I like paradoxes even better than mysteries,’ he said.

We packed away the mugs and the thermos, then as we continued, he asked me to tell him exactly what Rose had said of the tower. Somehow he was able to be a policeman in the midst of all the strangeness he was encountering, or perhaps he became his policeman self in order to cope with it. Either way, I liked how seriously he asked questions and listened to my answers, never telling me this or that was impossible, and how he sometimes smiled reassuringly at me. I explained that Mama had often told me stories when I was a little girl, and that I had passed them on to Rose. ‘Her stories were full of towers and princesses and princes.’

‘And wicked witches?’ he guessed.

I laughed a little. ‘Of course! The witch was the most important character. It was she who gave something and then demanded a terrible price, or who was offended and cursed the hero or heroine or locked them up. Without the witch there would be no story.’

‘Do you think this story has a witch?’ he asked.

I frowned, sobering. ‘I don’t know . . .’ I stopped, because the policeman was looking past me, his eyes widening with surprise. I turned to see that we had come to the top of the snowy incline we had been following. Now the land fell away sharply to a deep valley, which was white with snow at the upper edges but green and undulating at its base. Rising above one of the hills was a roof.

‘The tower,’ I said, my heart quickening.

But it was not a tower. An hour later, when we had got down into the valley, we saw that the steep-pitched roof we had seen belonged to a solitary little hovel, half built into a hill. It was sheer chance that we had been at the right angle to catch sight of it. We could see smoke drifting out of its crooked chimney.

‘What should we do?’ I asked, whispering.

‘Knock at the door and ask for directions to the tower,’ the policeman suggested. ‘Unless you think it might be the witch’s cottage.’ He sounded almost giddy and I wondered if he was telling himself that he was dreaming. But when I looked at him properly, his eyes were alight with determination and curiosity.

We made our way to the cottage door and banged its heavy knocker. The door opened after a long moment, and a wizened little woman peeped out, squinting short-sightedly at us.

‘We are seeking directions to the tower,’ said the policeman courteously.

‘I will ask my mistress,’ offered the crone and hobbled away, leaving us standing on her doorstep.

‘There is our witch,’ he said.

‘You must not joke,’ I said sternly, for I had the idea it might be dangerous to disbelieve the story you were in.

‘I have surrendered to mystery,’ he said. ‘That is when I began to see what you see.’

The old woman returned and bade us enter. We followed her down a dim, ornately carved corridor that seemed too long and grand to be contained by the little cottage. The policeman made a ghastly face at me as we entered and I had such an urge to pinch him in vexation that I was shocked. The hall brought us to a door where a carved fox leered at us, baring its teeth in a knowing smile. Then the door opened and though the room ought to be deep inside the hill against which the hut leaned its stolid rear, the first thing that met my eye was a large bay window with an arresting view of a forest that blazed with autumn colour. A fire crackling energetically on a wide hearth echoed the bright shades of the leaves, as did the red hair of the woman seated in a chair facing the fire.

‘I saw you!’ I blurted. ‘You were walking on the edge of the park. You had a bear with you!’

‘That was Godred. He has gone hunting but he will return before morning,’ said the woman, who might have been five and thirty or fifty. The only certain thing about her face was its beauty. Even her expression was ambiguous: an enigmatic smile below piercing, almond-shaped green eyes and frowning brows.

‘Who are you?’ asked the policeman.

‘You have the look and manners of an inquisitor,’ the woman observed disapprovingly. She looked at me expectantly, and without thinking I curtseyed and spoke my name as I had been taught to do as a child. Indeed, though I was only days from becoming a woman, she made me feel a child.

She nodded her approval. ‘You have pretty manners as well as a pretty face, I see. Well, Willow, I am Madame Torquemada. And you?’ She turned her eyes to the policeman.

‘I am Inspector Grey,’ he said calmly. ‘We have come to find a girl who was lost. She is the sister of this young lady.’

‘I have never seen any young lady here who was lost,’ said Madame Torquemada. ‘Why don’t you both sit down? I have asked Griselda to bring us some coffee and after that she will show you to your rooms. You can freshen yourselves before supper.’

‘Our rooms?’ I echoed.

She smiled, showing white even teeth and, despite her beauty, there seemed to me something dangerous in that baring of teeth. ‘Night is coming, my dear child, and Godred is not the only thing that will hunt when the moon rises, nor is he the most dangerous. We will dine together tonight and we will talk, and then if you wish I will direct you to the tower.’

Questions bubbled up in my throat and pressed against my lips. Before I could speak, however, the policeman rested a warning hand on my wrist. We sat in silence until Griselda came in staggering under the weight of a great carved tray laden with a heavy silver coffee jug, delicate porcelain mugs, several plates of dainty sandwiches and tiny iced cakes. The policeman got up and took it from her, and she set about serving us. We had given our coats and boots to Griselda to hang in an alcove by the front door, yet the slightly old-fashioned winter gown I wore was still too hot, for the fire threw out a surprising heat. The policeman’s cheeks were slightly flushed but he gave no other sign of discomfort as he sipped the delicious coffee, nor did he ask any questions, and when at last the old servant withdrew, Madame Torquemada gave him a faint smile.

‘There is more to you than meets the eye,’ she said. Without giving him the chance to respond, she swung her head and looked at me. ‘So, you seek your sister, who is lost to you. Are you so certain she wants to be found? Young ladies often don’t, you know.’

‘My sister is a child and I love her,’ I said. She lifted one brow as if to ask what that had to do with anything, so I added, ‘I fear it is my fault she is here.’

She inclined her head. ‘It is true you are the reason your sister is here, but it is not your fault. It is your mother’s fault. She made a bargain with me, and then tried to cheat.’

‘A . . . a bargain?’ I stammered.

She nodded. ‘She found a place where the curtain between our worlds was thin, and looked through – always a foolish thing to do, since of course one will inevitably see a mortal man and fall in love with him. Do not ask me why that is, but it always seems to work that way. It might even be that there is some law which governs such things.’ She said this to herself rather school-marmishly and suddenly I noticed that her red tresses were shot with silver.

‘You are the witch,’ I said.

‘Of course I am, child. What did you suppose? And no doubt in that childish world where you were born, all witches are wicked.’

‘Most of them,’ I admitted apologetically.

‘Of course. And those who seek us out are always innocent, never foolish or avaricious or covetous. Pah! Your mother came and begged me to help her. She wanted me to open the way to the world she had seen, and she wanted the man she had seen to fall in love with her. I tried to reason with her. You have only seen him, I told her. He might be a fool or a boor, or cruel, or worst of all, dull. But no, she must have him and no other. And nothing would do but that he must fall in love the minute he sets eyes on her. Now why would any girl want a man whose love can be bought by nothing more wondrous than a pretty face and shapely form?

But she would not listen, of course. The young are so conservative in their desires. It is the desires of the old that are marvellous and difficult, except for those fools who want only to be young again. Well, I tried to talk her out of it, but she would not be swayed, so still seeking to daunt her, I named such a high price I could not believe she would agree to it. Her immortality must be given up to open the way and her firstborn daughter must be surrendered to me before she became a woman, in payment for the charm to ensure the man would love her when he set eyes on her. She did not even try to bargain, the little fool. And having made the offer, I had no choice but to go ahead with it. There are rules that govern such bargains and even witches are subject to them.’

She looked out the window and, seeing that the sun had set over the autumn forest, she rang a bell at her elbow. Griselda came hobbling in to lead us to our chambers. I went meekly, bathed in the copper bowl of lukewarm water, then I donned the gown that had been laid out, a gorgeous dress of citrine silk that fell from my shoulders and brushed the floor. Griselda came to help me fix my hair and I let her do as she wished, gazing into the mirror and thinking that Rose had been taken by the witch instead of me, and somehow it must be put right.

When I was led to a vast dining room an hour or so later, the policeman was there alone, clad, to my surprise, in his own dark trousers and grey shirt. He stared at me and I felt the blood heat my cheeks.

‘You look like a princess,’ he said.

‘Of course she is a princess,’ said Madame Torquemada, entering resplendent in a gown of peacock purple and brilliant turquoise, though there was now a good deal more grey than red in her hair. ‘So was her mother, for all her silliness and deceits. A faerie princess, I mean, as opposed to the princesses of your land. There, all young women are princesses, but here or there, only a few have what it takes to be queens.’

‘A prince?’ I asked rather stupidly, for I was somewhat confounded at being told I was a faerie princess.

‘Growing up,’ Madame Torquemada said tartly. ‘Learning to think as well as feel. Girls who think are rare in any world.’ She went to the long, polished, wooden dining table and waited pointedly until the policeman came to pull out her chair for her. Then he came to seat me, before taking the other chair. Only then did I notice there was a fourth setting. Was it for Griselda? Somehow I could not imagine the doddering old servant sitting down with us. Rose then? I felt a thrill of excitement at the thought.

‘You were telling us about Willow’s mother,’ prompted the policeman, as he obeyed Madame Torquemada’s instruction to fill our first glasses with a pale topaz-coloured wine. I noticed with slight dismay that there were five glasses before me, ranging from the small one we held now, to a very large balloon and ending in a tiny glass thimble. I sipped frugally at the light yellow wine, delighted at the flowery taste, but warning myself that I must not finish it.

The witch began her story again.

‘Charledine was adamant, as I have said, and so I opened the way and she left with the love charm. I did not have to look to see if it worked. She wed your father and in due course she bore you. But then she discovered what all women learn who bear a child. She loved you. She had not bargained on that, else she might have barred her heart against you. Naturally she did not wish to give you up to me, especially after her husband died. You were yourself, but you were also all she had left of her prince, for of course all men who are loved are transformed into princes.’

The tale was interrupted again as Griselda came to serve the first course. It was a clear, delicious soup and I realised that I was hungry, for although we had drunk chocolate, we had not stopped to eat any of the picnic packed by the cook. The witch did not resume until the plates were cleared away, and the policeman had poured a glass apiece of the next bottle, a butterscotch-coloured wine with a tart bite that refreshed my mouth. It was so delicious I had trouble leaving even a little of it.

‘The bargain was that Charledine must bring her firstborn daughter to me before she was grown, whereupon the way that had been opened would close and she would be left to live her mortal life. Of course I expected you would not be delivered to me until the very eve of womanhood so I did not think of the matter, save occasionally, when I looked into my scrying mirror to see how you were coming along. When I saw your father had died, I knew there would be trouble, and sure enough, your mother fled to the end of the earth, as far from the way I had opened as she could. Typical and pointless, for naturally there was magic even at the end of the earth. A very different order of magic, to be sure, than that of this world, but a power that a witch could use. When your mama realised it, she knew that it was only a matter of time before I opened another way to fetch you. There was no need to hurry, for you were still far from womanhood as we count it.’

Another course was served and eaten in silence but I had lost my appetite because I was beginning to see what was coming, and to dread it. A rich red wine was poured, and this time I drank it all.

The witch sipped her wine appreciatively, then went on. ‘Charledine used a rather old-fashioned form of magic to summon a man who looked like your father, and she wed him and bore him a child. Of course, he was not a true prince because she did not truly love him. The child she conceived by him was named Rose. This daughter, also a firstborn child, she was careful not to love, for it was to be sacrificed in place of the daughter she had borne to her dead prince. She began to search for the gate that she knew I would construct, and when she found it, she influenced her husband to purchase an apartment beside it.

‘Then, when Rose was old enough to walk and understand instructions, she brought her here and sent her to find me.’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Mama couldn’t have meant to sacrifice Rose . . .’

‘She offered her to me, in settlement of our bargain. She realised I would know Rose was not her true firstborn, but she also knew how I would value the child’s youth. And Rose fitted the bargain, being born of Charledine’s blood and, if the meaning can be stretched a little, she was the true firstborn daughter of her father, if not her mother. So I accepted the child. Only later did I discover that I could not close the way I had opened because of the link of love that bound Rose to you. It was not the gauzy, inconsistent love of a princess for a prince, but the real, earthly love of one sister for another.

‘So, I had no choice but to leave the way open, knowing that eventually you would be drawn through it. And now here you are. Willow and her protector and champion, the Inquisitor.’

‘What happened to Willow’s mother, Charledine?’ asked the policeman.

The witch gave him a glimmering look, then she sighed and turned her gaze to me. ‘Your mother did not tell Rose what was happening. She had prepared her in a way, by filling her head with stories of towers and princesses and sacrifice. She had told Rose that a special destiny awaited her. She was to go to faerie and there face a wicked witch, and of course there was to be a prince.

‘But as she prepared to go, Rose turned back to her mother and said, “I love Willow and I don’t mind. Will you tell her that?” And Charledine saw then that Rose knew everything. It was not her faerie blood but her innocence that made her so wise. Rose knew that she had been born to save you. If she had cursed your mother and wept and begged to be spared, Charledine would not have been moved, but Rose gave herself willingly, because of her love for you.

‘I do not know what was in Charledine’s heart after Rose left her. Perhaps, at the very last, she loved the child, or maybe Rose’s words made her realise how you would feel when your beloved sister vanished, and she could not face it. She may even have feared that you would know what she had done, just as Rose did. Or maybe it is simply that, having freed you, she did not wish to go on without her prince, and so she lay down and gave up her spirit to the land.’

There was a long silence, and I felt the tears streaming down my face. I did not know if I wept more for my mother’s betrayal and death or for Rose’s sacrifice.

‘And Rose?’ asked the policeman.

But Griselda entered the room, this time with dessert. She put the small, eggshell-thin chocolate dishes of tiny forest strawberries in front of us, and I ate without tasting, certain the witch would say no more until the food was finished. Only as I put the last strawberry to my mouth did I notice the tips of my fingers were stained red. Something occurred to me. ‘In stories, when you eat a person’s food, you are in their power.’ There was a dull accusation in my voice.

‘My dear Willow, you were in my power from the moment you stepped into this land, for I am its queen,’ said the witch. She sighed a little and made an impatient gesture for Griselda to clear the table. In her haste to obey, the old woman dropped several of the strawberries, which rolled under the table. Seeing the poor old thing’s distress, I slipped from my seat to help her. When I put the berries into her gnarled hands, she gave me a toothless smile.

‘Your sister was kind too,’ she whispered, and scuttled out.

I turned to see Madame Torquemada watching me. She nodded. ‘Your sister came here, of course. Godred led her here. He took her the long way, for the tests. Her visit to me was the next-to-last test, and in being kind to my dear faithful Griselda, Rose showed her sweetness of nature. There remains only one test and it is the most dangerous. If she succeeds in it, she will become queen in my place. If she fails, she will be eaten by a dragon.’

‘I will take her place,’ I said at once.

Madam Torquemada laughed. ‘I have seen the passing of a thousand princesses and I have waited a thousand years for a worthy successor, though not always impatiently.’ She gave a secretive and rather sensuous smile, and glanced at the empty setting. Then her expression became weary and I saw that the red in her hair was now a mere burnish of gold on silver. ‘I will not release your sister, for none has ever come so close to winning my place.’

‘What is the test?’ asked the policeman.

The witch gave him her sharp-toothed smile. ‘She must make the queen’s choice, and not the choice of a princess.’