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?
But there was something different about the detective woman. Not only a new kind of kinship between them. Something else. It had to do with the keywrasse and the way Miss Quicke reached for it, the way it rubbed purring against her ankles, the long silent matched stare the both of them, woman and creature, held to. Margaret knew what she had seen, there in the underground back in Wapping, the keywrasse as large and swift as a lion and with eight legs and a coat that rippled like dark water, and then she saw again in her mind’s eye the drughr roaring and looming over everything, physical somehow, corporeal, and she rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.
It was no good. How could they stand against such a terror? And with one of the weir-bents taken by Jacob Marber, seized and stolen away, so that the creature Miss Quicke now treated like a companion would grow less and less timid, would become wilder and wilder, until eventually there’d be no controlling it at all. The carriage knocked suddenly and swerved to the left and then regained its balance and Margaret put out a hand to steady herself. Miss Quicke had opened her eyes, was watching her. Margaret said nothing. She thought of poor Frank Coulton, how horrified he’d have been if he’d known he’d end up a litch, a slave to his old partner Jacob Marber, and she thought of Jacob himself, who’d been so much calmer, so much sadder than she’d expected. She passed a hand over her eyes and last of all let her thoughts drift to Dr. Berghast. She didn’t know if he’d have received her bonebird, warning about the litch and Mr. Thorpe. The nursemaid’s account of his experiments had disturbed her, she saw now; but he was still, she told herself, the same man who’d fought to destroy the drughr all these years. He was still their truest hope.
And he had to be warned.
“We’ll need to get the kids away,” said Miss Quicke softly, opening her eyes. “They can’t stay at Cairndale.”
Margaret regarded her calmly. “Indeed,” she said. “You will see to that. I will find the glyphic and keep it safe from Walter.”
Miss Quicke, as if reading her thoughts, said, “And Berghast?”
“I’m angry about what he’s done,” said Margaret. “But it will wait. No doubt, he would tell us a right verdict justifies a wrong trial. And who is to say, were we in his position, that we would act any differently? He knows the nature of the drughr, what it will do to all of us, far better than we.”
“You sound like you’re making excuses for him.”
“Never,” she said sharply. “But first we must be certain the glyphic is safe and that the orsine is not in danger. Otherwise we will have worse to confront than Henry Berghast.”
“Will the drughr come to Cairndale, then?” asked Miss Quicke.
“Jacob Marber will come. And he does nothing, except at the drughr’s direction.”
“Coulton will be with him.”
Margaret felt a bite of guilt. “Yes.”
“I won’t fail him again. I’ll kill him, Margaret. I’ll put Frank out of his misery.”
She looked across and saw the flat dead eyes of a killer of men and she sensed, not for the first time, what a dangerous person Miss Quicke could be.
They were nearing now the crumbling stone wall marking the Cairndale grounds and she unlatched the window and reached a hand out and banged on the roof for the driver to stop.
“There’s one last thing,” she said. “The wards on the perimeter walls will not allow your guest to enter with us. Not unless they … fall.” She looked down at the keywrasse warily. “If you will forgive us, we must leave you here until such time as we can call for your help, or return.”
The keywrasse, very slowly, extended its claws and arched its back and yawned. Its four eyes vanished into slits.
“What would happen,” said the detective, “if we tried to take him through anyway?”
Margaret blew out her cheeks. “No one’s ever tried it. Do you wish to find out?”
Miss Quicke didn’t answer but instead opened the door and stepped out and the keywrasse darted off into the dusk. The driver said something then to her and the detective replied and got back up, the carriage swaying under her weight. But just before the door closed Margaret thought she glimpsed, far off along the snaking stone wall, a tall figure in a hat, striding away.
They continued on then, through the old gates and up the long gravel drive and past the gatehouse and into the courtyard of Cairndale. The manor felt different—chillier, isolated, abandoned. No one came out to greet them. There were no students playing in the courtyard. Margaret raised her eyes as they came to a halt.
A light was burning in Dr. Berghast’s study.
* * *
Henry Berghast ran a hand over his smooth scalp, down the back of his neck, the skin prickling.
“Marlowe,” he said softly. “You have returned.”
The child stood in the doorway wavering, his face very white. Berghast could see abrasions on his wrists. He was staring hollow-eyed around him, as if he did not know the place, as if there was something he was trying to remember.
“Easy, child,” murmured Berghast, coming toward him with his hands outstretched the way he would approach a skittish horse. “Come, sit. You will be tired.”
The child came dutifully forward, sat in the big armchair by the fire. His voice when he spoke sounded cracked, thin, as if he hadn’t used it in a very long time.
“I … want to see Charlie. Is Charlie … here?” he said.
Berghast was already moving around the desk, locating the glove, returning to gather fuel for the fire in the grate. His manservant, Bailey, had melted back into the shadows on the far wall and loomed there silent, watchful.
“Charlie is safe, child,” said Berghast. “He will be pleased to see you.”
The boy nodded to himself.
For just a moment Berghast felt a quick sharp twinge of guilt, seeing how little he was, how exhausted. He’d been afraid the boy would not make his way back out in time but his fear was not over the child’s welfare but rather his usefulness and he knew, in that moment, that something inside himself had been lost, lost for good. But he’d been alive too long, had seen too many decades slide past, too many lives fade away, for him to dwell on it. Death was a part of life and did not distinguish between the very young and the very old. His death would come in due course too. He would not weep.
He saw the boy looking at the glove in his hands.
“Your Mr. Ovid brought it to me,” he said smoothly. “We hoped it might help us get back to you, get you free. We were just preparing to come for you.”
“It was Jacob Marber,” whispered the boy. “He found us.”
Berghast met Bailey’s eye across the study and something unspoken passed between them. “You saw Jacob? You are certain?”
The boy nodded, his blue eyes watchful.
“What else do you remember?”
“I remember all of it.”
Berghast felt a slow, deep satisfaction welling up inside him. “Of course you do. It is because you are a part of the orsine. I wish to know everything, child. I presume Jacob tried to steal the artifact?”
Again the boy nodded. “But he gave it back.”
At this, Berghast frowned. He knew the nature of the drughr and how badly it wanted the glove and he didn’t understand why Jacob Marber would give it back.
“He’s coming here now,” added the boy quietly. “He’s coming to kill you.”
Berghast crossed to the canvas on his wall, folded his hands at his back. In the dim light the lines seemed to track and drift and move. “So they have failed me, then,” he said. “Your Miss Quicke and Mrs. Harrogate have failed me.”
The boy’s voice faltered. “Is Alice okay?”
“Well. She is resourceful.”