What was troubling him was not, in fact, the drughr. No. He saw no reason to believe the drughr’s reach could extend past the glyphic’s wards. No; it was, he understood, the nursemaid Crowley. He did not like the way she had reacted when he told her the child must be sent away, for its own protection. Would she prove an impediment? He was not sure.
He was sure, however, of the danger. It would be only a matter of time before Jacob Marber came for the baby, before the drughr came. He knew this with a certainty. The glyphic had hinted as much, some days ago. It was not the child’s welfare of course but everything the child represented—the possibility of power, of redemption—that drew both the drughr and Henry himself to it, like lake pike to the scent of blood in the water. It was an old, endless game of strategy that he and the drughr played. The child might yet prove decisive.
The lantern was high in his fist. He ascended the stairs at the far end of the tunnel, his long legs taking them two at a time, and he paused in the night air. The scumbled stones and broken walls of the old monastery rose up around him in the darkness. He looked back across the loch at Cairndale, lit against the sky like a ship at anchor. Something was not right.
He frowned, brushed the worry from his mind. One could prepare, and then one could wait. But worry served no purpose.
He ducked his head and with the lantern held out before him made his way through the ruined monastery and down to the cistern below. Even before he had emerged from the curving stone stairs he could sense something was wrong. The chamber, usually lit a faint blue color, the reflected shine of the orsine, was furiously bright. The orsine was shining in full blast.
He held a hand to his eyes and squinted, uncertain. It had never been so bright before.
For a long impossible moment he stood, thinking. If the orsine was alight, it meant it had opened. If it had opened, it meant the glyphic’s powers were—
And then, in a growing fear, he understood. He turned swiftly on his heel and ran. He ran for the tunnel and took the stairs three at a time and ran with his long scissorlike strides the length of it beneath the loch, the lantern swinging dangerously in his fist, and when he got back to his study he hurtled out through the antechamber and past an astonished Mr. Bailey and he did not stop, he did not slow, though his hat flew from his head and several old talents and a few of the young children stopped in the halls to watch him pass, unnerved, alarmed. He did not stop or slow until he reached Miss Crowley’s rooms, until he reached the baby.
The east wing was quiet, calm. He tried to slow his breathing, he adjusted his waistcoat and combed his fingers with his hair and then he knocked firmly.
He heard Miss Crowley’s irritated voice even before she opened the door. “Mr. Laster, sir, you really must—” Then she fell silent, staring up at Berghast in surprise. “Oh, forgive me, sir, I thought you were—”
“Laster. Yes.” He pushed past her. Some part of his brain flickered at that, wondering why the gatekeeper would be bothering the nursemaid. But then it was gone. “Where is the child, Miss Crowley?” he said quietly. “There has been no … disturbance?”
“Disturbance, sir?”
“You have been here all this time?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked all around. The rooms seemed quiet, warm, just as he’d left them. He dialed his face slowly toward the curtain, toward the crib that would be just beyond it, willing his heart to calm down. Had he been mistaken?
“The wee thing’s sleeping, sir. Not a peep out of him.” Miss Crowley put a hand to her throat, her nose crinkling. “But what has happened, Dr. Berghast? Is something the matter?”
He did not answer her. A dread was rising in him. He went to the curtain, drew it slowly back, and stared down at the crib.
It was empty.
* * *
Jacob held the swaddled thing close to his chest as he ran through the halls. The soft warm weight of it. The smallness of it. He half feared he might smother it and he kept slowing and lifting its face away to peer down at it in its blanket and then looking up and around and running on.
He’d left Walter. He’d just scooped the baby into his arms and turned and slipped out of the nursemaid’s rooms with the dust cloaking his presence as before, scarcely daring to look at the child, to marvel at its sweetness and wonder at his holding him again, but once in the outer hall he abandoned all deceits and he just ran.
The hour was late. He needed to get back to the cellars, to the tunnel. He feared being seen, of course; but more, he feared the drughr’s power would fail, and the glyphic’s wards would return to strength, and he would be trapped inside Cairndale’s walls.
He slowed in the servants’ corridor. There were voices ahead in the kitchens and he stopped at the door, lurking in the shadow, listening. He thought it must be the cooks or the serving staff but he was wrong, it was two men talking about missing kids, a tunnel in the cellars. He heard a third voice call up from below, then retreat away. They’d found the tunnel.
He melted back into darkness, alarmed.
The corridor was long, flagstoned, its walls peeling with ancient gray paint. There were candle sconces standing empty along the walls. Several doors, all shut, and then the stairs at the back. He was trying to think how he might get out. He slid his coat over the baby to muffle any cry it might make and then he turned at a sound. Footsteps. Someone was coming.
He swallowed, freed his hands for the dustwork. He had some confidence he could strangle whoever approached, unless they proved a talent of some strength.
But just then someone hissed his name. “Jacob, this way! Come!”
It was Walter, peering through a half-opened door just down the way. Jacob didn’t hesitate. In a flash he was across and through and the door was closing. They were in a kind of narrow broom closet, the only light creeping in through a crack in the door. Jacob could smell the sour reek of sickness coming out of Walter’s clothes. The small man looked up at him, held a finger to his lips.
Whoever hurried past did not slow.
Then Jacob felt a gentle tugging at his sleeve. It was Walter, leading him deeper back into the closet. At the far wall the little man pressed a hidden panel, and a door appeared.
Jacob followed him through. He was feeling wonder and a savage amazement. He’d seduced Walter because the man was weak, vulnerable, an easy mark. He’d not imagined the man also might be genuinely resourceful.
Walter’s hidden passage led through to a small sitting room, its furniture draped in white sheets. Jacob caught a glimpse of the three of them—himself, Walter, the baby—in a tall clouded mirror standing near a window. Apparitions, each one. Then they were slipping soundlessly out into the grand foyer of Cairndale Manor.
It stood empty and dark. The great hearth had burned down to embers. Jacob moved quickly toward the front doors but he wasn’t even halfway when Walter stopped in alarm.
There was a figure standing in front of the doors. A woman, thin, severe, with a cloth tied over her eyes. She was, Jacob realized, blind.
“Just where do you think you are going?” she said.
Walter was looking at Jacob in fear, confusion flickering across his face. He waved his hands in some furtive way as if to communicate something but Jacob felt a sharp impatience bloom inside him and he stepped forward.
“You have mistaken us for another,” he said coldly.
And then the baby started to cry.
Jacob watched her face turn toward him in the darkness. She seemed to register his words. “I believe,” she said slowly, “that is true.”
That was all. And yet, it was as if she had said: I know what you are here for, Jacob Marber. I know what you are. Somehow—maybe from her expression, or the silence that hung after, broken only by the thin cry of the child—Jacob got the distinct feeling that she knew exactly what was happening. Blind or not, she knew.
And it was then he sensed a shift in the gloom all around them, and he looked down in surprise and saw the baby, the child, was flickering with a faint blue shine.
“Miss Davenshaw, ma’am—” Walter began.