A Skinful of Shadows Read online

  ‘Are they damned?’ she blurted out. Is Mother going to Hell? Did I send her to Hell? ‘The minister said—’

  ‘Oh, pox on the minister!’ snapped Obadiah. ‘You’ve been raised by a nest of Puritans, you stupid girl. A crop-headed, preachy bunch of ranters and ravers. That minister is going to Hell some day, and dragging his raggle-taggle flock with him. And unless you forget every crazy notion they crammed into your head, you’ll go the same way. Did they even christen you?’ He gave a little grunt of approval when Makepeace nodded. ‘Ah, well, that is one thing at least.

  ‘Those creatures – the ones that want to burrow into your head. Did any of them ever get in?’

  ‘No,’ Makepeace said, with an involuntary shudder. ‘They tried, but I . . . I fought . . .’

  ‘We must be certain. Come here! Let me look at you.’ When Makepeace ventured nervously within reach, the old man reached out and gripped her chin with surprising strength.

  Startled, Makepeace met his gaze. At once she smelt wrongness like smoke.

  His map-wrinkled face was dull, but his eyes were not. They were cloudy amber and cold. She did not understand what it meant, but she knew that there was something very wrong with Obadiah. She did not want to be near him. She was in danger.

  His features crinkled and puckered very slightly, as if his face were holding a conversation with itself. Then he half closed his ancient eyes, and examined Makepeace through the gleaming slivers.

  Something was happening. Something was touching the sore places in her soul, exploring, probing. She gave a croak of protest, and tried to squirm out of Obadiah’s grip, but his hold was painfully firm. For a moment it was as if she were back in the nightmare, in her own darkened room, with the molten voice in her ear, and the ruthless spirit clawing at her mind . . .

  She gave a short, sharp scream, and reached for her soldiers of the mind. As she lashed out in thought, she felt the probing presence flinch back. Obadiah’s hand released her chin. Makepeace lurched backwards, falling to the floor. She curled into a ball, eyes clenched shut, fists over her ears.

  ‘Ha!’ Obadiah’s exhalation sounded like a laugh. ‘Maybe you did fight them off, after all. Oh, stop your whimpering, child! I shall believe you for now, but understand this – if one of those dead vermin has made a nest in your brain, you are the one in danger. You cannot scour them out without our help.’

  Makepeace’s heart was hammering, and she found it hard to breathe. Just for a moment, she had locked gazes with something wrong. She had seen it, and it had seen her. And something had touched her mind the way the dead things did.

  But Obadiah was not dead, was he? Makepeace had seen him breathing. She must have been mistaken. Perhaps all aristocrats were just as terrifying.

  ‘Understand this,’ he said, without warmth. ‘Nobody wants you. Not even your mother’s kin. What will happen to you out in the world, I wonder? Will you be thrown into Bedlam? If not, I suppose you will starve, or freeze to death, or be murdered for the few rags you wear . . . if the dead vermin do not find you first.’

  There was a pause, and then the old man spoke again, his voice impatient.

  ‘Look at the trembling, damp-eyed thing! Put her somewhere where she cannot break anything. Girl – you must show some gratitude and obedience, and cease these fits, or we will throw you out on the moors. And then nobody will protect you when the vermin come for you. They will eat out your brain like the meat of an egg.’

  CHAPTER 5

  A lean, young manservant led Makepeace up stairway after stairway, and showed her into a narrow little room with a flock bed in it, and a chamber pot. There were bars on the window, but painted birds on the walls, and Makepeace wondered whether it had once been a nursery. The young servant was barely out of boyhood, and his features were beaky, like the white-haired Mr Crowe. Makepeace wondered blearily whether they were related.

  ‘Count your blessings, and calm your antics,’ he said, as he set down a jug of small beer and a bowl of pottage on the floor for her. ‘No more shrieking and lunging at folks, do you hear? We’ve a stick for tricks like that.’

  The door closed behind him, and a key turned in the lock. Makepeace was left alone with her bewilderment. Lunging? When had she done that? She did not know anything any more.

  As she ate the food, Makepeace stared out through the bars at the grey sky, the courtyard, and the fields and moors beyond its surrounding wall. Would this be her home forever, this tower-room prison? Would she grow old here, tucked out of sight and mischief, as the Fellmottes’ pet madwoman?

  Makepeace could not settle. Her mind was too full. She found herself pacing the little room. Sometimes she realized that she was murmuring to herself, or that the murmur had sunk into her throat and become a guttural noise.

  The walls spun as she lurched and turned, their paper peeling like silver birch bark. She was arguing with the heat and noise in her brain. There was somebody else in the room, and they were being unreasonable. But they were never there when she turned.

  At last her knees gave, and she tumbled to the floor and lay there. She felt too vast and heavy ever to move again, a thing of mountains and plains. Aches and itches edged across her landscape like travellers. She noted them with disinterest as slumber swallowed her.

  And in her dreams she was walking through a forest, but could only take ten steps in any direction before a tree trunk rose up and bruised her. Birds of every sort perched on the boughs, trilling and mocking her. The sky gleamed grey-black like a jackdaw’s wing, and her throat was sore from roaring.

  Makepeace woke groggily in the early twilight. She stared numbly through the barred window at the violet sky, with its greasy rags of cloud. A bat fleet-fluttered across them for a moment like a dark thought.

  She was lying on the floor, not the bed, and she hurt.

  Makepeace sat up gingerly, supporting herself on one hand, and winced. She ached all over. Even her hands stung. Peering at them, she noticed dark grazes on the knuckles. Previously some of her nails had been broken, but now several were torn to the quick. There was a tender swelling on her left temple and right cheek, and her exploring fingers found bruises on her arms and hip.

  ‘What happened to me?’ she asked herself aloud.

  Perhaps she really had fallen into a fit. She could think of no other explanation. The manservant might have threatened her with a stick, but she thought she would have noticed if he had come in and used it.

  I must have injured myself. There is nobody here but me.

  As if to mock that very thought, she heard a noise behind her.

  Makepeace spun round, looking for the source of the sound. Nothing. Only the empty room, and the stretching diamond of light from the window.

  Her heart hammered. The noise had been so shockingly clear, like breath against her neck, sending a tingle deep into her inner ear. And yet a moment later she could not have described it.

  Gruff. A brute sound. That was all she knew.

  And then she smelt something. A reek like hot blood, an autumn woodland, a wet horsey-doggy smell, musky and potent. She recognized it at once.

  She was not alone.

  That’s impossible! It was burning itself out! And we’re three days’ ride from Poplar! How would it find me? And they destroy ghosts here – how would it get into Grizehayes without anyone noticing it?

  But it had. There was no mistaking that reek. Somehow, impossibly, the Bear was in the room with her.

  Makepeace backed towards the door, even though she knew it was pointless. Her eyes flicked around the darkening room. There were too many shadows. She could not tell if they were wisping or warping. She could not tell where the translucent eyes were watching her.

  Why? Why had it followed her? Makepeace felt frightened and betrayed. It had come after its two torturers for revenge, but she had not harmed it at all! In fact . . . back at the Angel, she had even imagined that they had felt a moment of sympathy, of shared pain and rage, and that it had stepped in t
o rescue her . . .

  But it’s a ghost. And ghosts only want to claw their way into your head. And it’s a beast, and it owes you nothing. Idiot! Did you really think that it was your friend?

  And now she was locked in with it. There was no running. No escape.

  There was a sudden rough gust of sound at her ear. Red hot. Deafening. Closer than close.

  Too close.

  Makepeace panicked. She gave a shriek, and fled to the door, hammering it with her fists.

  ‘Let me out!’ she yelled. ‘You have to let me out! There’s something in here! There’s a ghost in here!’

  Oh please, please let the family have left a guard outside my door! Please, please, let someone hear me out in the courtyard!

  She ran to the window. She tried to squeeze her face between the bars.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘Help me!’

  The cold of the bars burned against her face. They pressed against her right temple and left cheek, exactly on the bruises. The sensation shocked her into memory. A hazy recollection of a similar moment, forcing her head between the bars. Trying to force her way through, towards freedom and the fair sky.

  Makepeace heard her own yell become more guttural, a long, open-throated roar. And now her face was pressing against the bars with bruising force, squirming, trying to force its way through. Her vision was marked by black spots. She could feel her hands scrabbling uselessly against the stonework, the skin scraping painfully from her fingertips . . .

  Stop! she told herself. Stop! What am I doing?

  The truth hit her like a falling star.

  Oh God. Oh God in Heaven. I am such a fool.

  Of course the Bear was able to enter Grizehayes. Of course it’s here.

  It’s inside me.

  A blind, angry, desperate ghost was inside her. Her worst fear had happened, after all. And now the Bear would blunder around in her, and smash her mind to pieces. It would bloody and break her body in its frenzy to leave the turret room . . .

  Stop!

  Terrified, she called up her long-dormant defences again, her angels of the mind. They rallied and raged, and she heard the Bear growl. With a superhuman effort of will she closed her eyes, trapping both herself and the Bear in darkness. It was a night full of silent noise, for her mind was roaring with as much panic as the Bear.

  Something happened. A sudden blow shuddered her mind to the core. For a fleeting moment she felt her soul buckle and struggle to right itself. Memories bled, thoughts ripped. The Bear had struck out at her.

  And yet it was that blow that shocked Makepeace out of her panic.

  Frightened. It’s frightened.

  She imagined it, a great Bear lost in darkness, friendless and trapped as it had been for so long. It could not understand where it was, or why its body was so strange and weak. All it knew was that it was under attack, just as it had always been under attack . . .

  Gently but firmly Makepeace took control over her breathing. She drew in breath after calm breath, trying to slow her heartbeat, trying to banish the fear that the Bear would tear her apart from within.

  Hush, she whispered to it with her mind.

  She pictured the Bear again, but now imagined herself standing beside it, arms outstretched, as she had stood in that moment when they had tried to protect each other.

  Hush. Hush, Bear. It’s me.

  The silent roaring subsided to an intermittent, silent growl. Perhaps it knew her, just a little. Perhaps it understood that nothing was attacking it now.

  I am your friend, she told it. And then, I am your cave.

  Cave. It did not understand words, but Makepeace felt it gingerly take hold of the idea, like an apple in its jaws. Maybe it had never been wild, but had been reared at a chain’s end since it was a cub. But it was still a bear, and deep in its soul it knew what a cave was. Cave was not prison. Cave was home.

  As it calmed down, Makepeace wondered how she had failed to notice it in her head. Perhaps her feeling of sickness and strangeness had been the result of contracting her mind to make room for it.

  It was big, if one could use such a word to describe something spectral. Makepeace could now sense its unthinking power. It could probably crush her mind, as easily as one of its paws might have taken out her throat if they had met in life. But it was calmer now, and she felt its control over her body loosen a little. Now she could at least swallow, relax her shoulders, move her fingers.

  Makepeace took a few more moments to muster her courage, then dared to open her eyes. She made sure she was facing away from the window. Bars might mean prison to the Bear, and she did not want to drive it into a frenzy again. Instead, she dropped her gaze to her own hands.

  She let the Bear see them, and slowly flexed the fingers so that it knew that these were the only paws it had now. She let it see the ravaged nails, then the bloodied fingertips. No claws, Bear. Sorry.

  A small, dark ripple of emotion passed through the Bear. Then it lowered Makepeace’s head, and licked at the wounded fingers with her tongue.

  It was an animal, and owed her nothing. It was a ghost, and could not be depended upon. Perhaps the Bear was simply attending to its own injuries. But the licking was very gentle, as if the wounds belonged to an injured cub.

  By the time the young manservant arrived with a switch, to beat Makepeace for ‘howling like a heathen and raising Cain’, she had made a decision. She would not betray Bear.

  Lord Fellmotte had told her that it was dangerous to have a rogue ghost in her head, and perhaps he was telling the truth. But she did not like Obadiah. His gaze made her feel like a mouse in owl country. If she told him about Bear, he would tear Bear out of her somehow and destroy him.

  It was risky, keeping secrets from a man like that. If he ever found out that Makepeace was hiding something like this, she suspected that he would be terribly angry. Perhaps he would throw her out on the moors as he threatened, or have her sent to Bedlam to be chained and whipped.

  But she was glad that nobody had come running to her rescue when she had screamed. Bear had never been given a fair chance in life. She was all Bear had. And Bear was all she had.

  So she said nothing as the switch landed a half-dozen solid thwacks across her shoulders and back. They stung, and Makepeace knew they would leave welts. She kept her eyes clenched shut, and did her best to soothe Bear in her mind. If she lost control and lashed out, as she suspected she had before, then sooner or later somebody might suspect that she had a ghostly passenger.

  ‘I don’t enjoy this, you know,’ said the young man piously, and Makepeace thought that he probably even believed his own words. ‘It’s for your own good.’ She suspected he had never had this much power over someone before.

  After he had left, Makepeace’s eyes watered, and it felt as if red-hot bars were being pressed against the flesh of her back. The feeling brought back memories, but they were not her own.

  The music of guitar and tabor throbbed in her bones, and stirred a recollection of hot coals thrown under her tender, half-grown paws to force her to dance. She tottered, and tried to drop to all fours, only to receive a stinging blow across her soft muzzle.

  It was Bear’s early memories of being trained as a cub, she realized. She felt a flood of anger on his behalf, and hugged herself because it was the only way to hug him.

  They understood something together at that moment, Makepeace and Bear. Sometimes you had to be patient through pain, or people gave you more pain. Sometimes you had to weather everything and take your bruises. If you were lucky, and if everyone thought you were tamed and trained . . . there might come a time when you could strike.

  CHAPTER 6

  Makepeace was woken by a faint tink-tink-tink sound. For a moment she was confused by her surroundings, until the ache of her bruises reminded her where she was. She had not been trusted with a candle or rushlight, so the only light came from the window.

  She was startled to realize that there was a head at
the window, silhouetted against the deep violet evening sky. As she stared, a hand was raised to tap again at the bars. Tink, tink, tink.

  ‘Hey!’ came a whisper.

  Makepeace stood unsteadily, and limped over to the window. To her surprise, she found that a lanky boy about fourteen years old was clinging to the wall outside. He seemed to be precariously perched on some sort of shallow ledge, one hand gripping the bars to steady himself. He had chestnut hair, and a pleasant, ugly, wilful face, and he seemed unfazed by the four-storey drop beneath him. His clothes were better than hers, almost too good for a servant.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘James Winnersh,’ he answered, as if that explained everything.

  ‘What do you want?’ she hissed. She was certain that he was not supposed to be there. She had also heard that folks sometimes visited Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics, and she was in no mood for gawpers or gigglers.

  ‘I came to see you!’ he replied, still in a whisper. ‘Come over here! I want to talk to you!’

  Reluctantly she approached the window. She could tell that Bear did not like being too close to people, and she did not want him to lose control. As the light fell on her face, the boy outside gave a little laugh that sounded half jubilant, half incredulous.

  ‘So it is true. You’ve got the same chin as me.’ He touched a cleft in his own chin, just like hers. ‘Yes,’ he said, in answer to her wide-eyed look. ‘It’s our little legacy. Sir Peter’s signature.’

  Blood rushed to Makepeace’s face as she realized what he meant. She was not Sir Peter’s only child out of wedlock. Deep down, Makepeace had wanted to believe that her parents had been in love, so that her own existence would mean something. But no, Mother must have been a dalliance, nothing more.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ Makepeace hissed, even though she did. ‘Take it back!’ She could not bear it. In the strange, white heat of the moment, she wanted to pull out the bars by their roots and hit him with them.