Читать книгу The Fatal Strand - Robin Jarvis - Страница 9

Kneeling in front of a large open cupboard in the Websters’ cramped attic apartment, Edie Dorkins sucked her teeth and surveyed the cluttered bric-a-brac of Miss Veronica’s belongings.

Amongst the dusty, neglected jumble were some interesting odds and ends, culled from every age of The Wyrd Museum’s existence. A rolled up bundle of parchments, tied up with a lavender ribbon, revealed a collection of sonnets, letters and poems from the quills of the finest poets and playwrights. There were tiny framed miniatures of all three sisters; the women still appeared old, even though they had posed for the portraits several centuries ago. A purse of moth-eaten velvet contained diverse and sumptuous pieces of jewellery; from quite plain and chunky lumps of twisted gold, to single earrings or broken bracelets which sparked with finely cut gems.

Edie coveted this fabulous treasure and stuffed many of the shiny trinkets into her coat pocket, before crawling a little deeper into the cupboard to see what else she could discover in this fascinating hoard. To her annoyance, her progress was impaired by countless stone jars and bottles which the woman had squeezed into every conceivable space. Edie resented them; they were maddeningly in the way and did not contain anything that appealed to her poaching piracy.

Amongst those many pots were the late Miss Veronica’s innumerable aids to beauty. There were tins of flour and chalk which she had applied to her face; she had fancied that the dramatically bloodless effect granted her a much younger appearance. This grotesquerie was always heightened by a great daubing stripe of garish red from a tub of vermilion ooze, which the old woman had spread thickly across her lips, making her look like a nightmarish clown.

In another vessel, Edie found the lumps of charcoal which Miss Veronica had used to mark out her eyebrows, and a big bottle of green glass contained an unctuous, tarry mixture with which she had dyed her hair. Carelessly piled on top of each other, these receptacles were every shape and size, and maintained a brittle balance which Edie’s foraging threatened to capsize with each fresh incursion.

Sitting in the armchair next to the cold hearth, latticed by the grey light of the early morning which shone weak and pale through the one diamond-crossed window, Miss Ursula tapped her fingers upon the worn upholstery, patiently counting out each slow second. No expression modelled her pinched, camel-like features, but her raw eyes were a testament to the suffering she had endured during the recent hours.

A clattering avalanche of pots and jars caused the woman to jerk her head back and look across at the young girl half hidden inside her dead sister’s cupboard.

‘You will find nothing of note in there, Edith,’ she told her.

Edie rolled backwards and lay on her side, playfully flicking a dead, dusty mouse she had found across the threadbare carpet.

‘Where’s Celandine?’ she asked.

‘I allowed her free movement through the museum. I think it best for her. You know how she likes to wander, talking to the exhibits – it may help her come to terms with … what has occurred.’

Miss Ursula’s eyes fell upon the empty grate by the armchair and gave a slight shudder as she stared at those cold ashes and cinders. ‘Not since that day when we first came upon the forest clearing have I known such distress.’

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Edie regarded the black-gowned woman and said, ‘Tell me about the Loom.’

The faintest of creases furrowed Miss Ursula’s forehead. ‘You already know everything. The Loom was made from the first bough hewn from the World Tree by the Lord of the Frost Giants.’

‘But what was it like?’ the child persisted.

Miss Ursula sank back into the chair. ‘There are no adequate words to explain,’ she said. ‘From the moment I set it in motion and the glittering threads ran through the warp, everything was enslaved, including myself. Many have cursed my name since that day, but had I balked at the deed, then the lords of the ice would have destroyed the last vestige of Yggdrasill, and the end would have come before there had barely been a beginning. What choice had I?’

Edie reached for a small, unglazed ceramic jar which fitted pleasantly in her palm, and toyed with the idea of popping the dead mouse inside it.

‘Was you scared?’ she asked, irked to find that the lid of the jar was stuck in place.

‘Terrified,’ Miss Ursula confessed. ‘I had taken it upon myself and my sisters to become Mistresses of Destiny. Yet I was exhilarated also, and when the first glimmering strands began to weave the untold history of the world, it was the most entrancing sight I had ever beheld, outshining even the spectacle of Askar beneath the dappling sky of the great ash’s leaves.’

Lifting her face to the ceiling, where deserted cobwebs festooned the chandelier, the old woman’s stern countenance melted.

‘What ravishing beauty the fabric of the Fates possessed,’ she murmured. ‘Every stitch was an unseen moment in time and the threads of life shone with an intensity according to the nature of who they belonged to. How that shimmering splendour captivated me and my sisters, and how easily we accepted our roles – even Veronica.

‘You cannot imagine how bewitching that tapestry became – a rippling expanse of colour and movement that burned with a light like no other. Patterns of joy and creation glowed within its fabric in an ever-shifting performance of lustrous delight.’

Rising from the seat, the woman fetched Edie’s woollen pixie hood down from the mantelpiece, where she had placed it to dry after washing the blood and dirt of the girl’s adventures from its fibres.

‘The glittering strands which course through this hood are an impoverished representation of the glorious wonders which were stretched upon the Loom. Yet the garment is a symbol of your bond with us, Edith dear. A joining of your life to that of Nirinel.’

Edie came to stand next to her. ‘Is it dry?’ she demanded. ‘Give it to me.’

The old woman placed the small pointed hood upon the girl’s head and, with a slender finger, traced the interwoven streaks of silver tinsel.

‘Celandine knitted this from a single thread taken from the patterns of our own woven doom,’ she explained. ‘Through it passes the unstoppable might of Destiny and your life is tied to it.’

‘What did the Loom look like?’ the child asked.

Miss Ursula walked across the room to where a damask curtain hung across a doorway. ‘Come, child,’ she instructed.

The old woman led the girl down the narrow flight of stairs which led to the third floor of The Wyrd Museum, only to pause when they reached halfway. A huge oil painting hung upon the near wall and Miss Ursula regarded it with satisfaction.

‘I remember that I was a trifle harsh with the artist when he delivered the work to me,’ she said. ‘I thought he had taken my description a little too literally but, on reflection, it is a fine enough depiction of those far off days.’

Edie stared dutifully at the great canvas.

The borders of a vast forest crowded the edges of the frame but, rearing from the ground in the centre, was a representation of a titanic ash tree. The figures of three young maidens stood about a wide pool by the roots. Edie guessed that they were supposed to be the Websters and she smiled to note that, even here, Miss Celandine was dancing.

‘I do not recall if I ever congratulated the artist on his capturing of my sisters,’ Miss Ursula muttered. ‘I know that I was irritated by the veil he had painted across my face. But, now that I look closely, that nymph robed in white is unmistakably Veronica. Perhaps he based this portrayal upon a lover, for surely there is an intensity there. An unbounded beauty and tenderness, more so than the others. Veronica was like that; none could outshine her.’

Lifting her hand, she pointed at the measuring rod in the figure’s hand. ‘There is her cane,’ she said regretfully. ‘Alas for its loss in the burning – it is another power gone from this place and I wish we still had it in our keeping.’

The old woman’s jaw tightened and an expression that was drenched in dread settled over her gaunt face. ‘I must not anticipate the days ahead,’ she cautioned herself. ‘The ordeal will be severe enough without wishing it any closer.’

‘But the Loom,’ Edie prompted.

Miss Ursula’s caressing hand travelled across the varnished oils to where violet shadows were cast over her own, younger counterpart and directed the girl’s scrutiny towards a large structure fashioned from great timbers.

‘There it is,’ she breathed. ‘That which yoked us all and made us slaves to the lives we were allotted.’

‘Don’t look much,’ Edie grumbled with disappointment.

Miss Ursula straightened. ‘I was deliberately vague in the description I presented to the artist,’ she explained. ‘There were certain … details I had reason to leave out. But, in essence, that is the controlling device which dominated us all.

‘The span and tale of all things were entwined in that cloth, Edith. Yet within its bitter beauty were also large, ugly patches of fathomless shadow, where hate and war were destined to occur. Sometimes those conflicts were bidden to prove so violent that the horror and cruelty fated to transpire in the world would rip and tear through the fabric, causing vicious rents to mar the surrounding pattern. Dangerous and ungovernable are those fissures in the web of Fate. Although we did our best to repair them – poor Celandine toiled so hard, so often – many lovely things and brave souls were lost forever within those hollow voids and there was naught we could do.’

‘I came from one of them,’ Edie chirped.

Miss Ursula inclined her head and bestowed one of her rare smiles upon the child. ‘Indeed you did, Edith,’ she said. ‘When war rages and the cloth rips wide, my sisters and I are blind. We could see nothing beneath the banner of death which obscured those years and so we missed you – the very one we had waited for all these years. Still, once we realised our error, we were able to perform a little belated repair and pluck you through it to join us.’

Her eyes still riveted upon the indistinct portrait of the Loom, Edie asked, ‘What happened to it?’

Miss Ursula smoothed out the creases of her taffeta gown. ‘I believe I told you before you went to Glastonbury, Edith. The Loom was broken many years ago and cannot be remade. The tapestry of the world’s destiny was never completed and thus our futures remain uncertain.’

Edie lowered her gaze and fiddled with the jar she still held in her hand. Miss Ursula seemed to forget her young charge and was following her own train of thought.

‘Without the Cloth of Doom to guide me, how can I be sure that the path I have chosen is the right one? Is there still time to turn back and steer away from this course? Too long have I spent foretelling the pages of the world to act blindfold now. Halt this, Ursula, you must.’

Not listening to her, Edie gave the lid another twist and at last the wretched jar was opened. Bringing it close to her face, the girl inspected the contents to see if there was room for a dead mouse inside. But a foul-smelling, ochre-coloured ointment filled the small vessel and she groaned inwardly at having unearthed yet more of Miss Veronica’s wrinkle cream.

At her side Miss Ursula looked up sharply as though she had heard something.

‘It is too late!’ she cried, expelling her indecision with a clap of her hands. ‘He is here! Come, Edith, the one I have sent for, our catalyst – he arrives. We must greet him.’

Edie had not heard anything, but she knew that the eldest of the Websters was more attuned to the vibrations of this mysterious building than herself.

As Miss Ursula descended the stairs, the girl hesitated. She gave the ointment within the jar one final sniff, then stuck out her tongue to lick it experimentally. Retching and coughing, the girl hurriedly followed Miss Ursula into the main part of the museum, shoving the jar into her pocket with the rest of her magpie finds.

Neil Chapman had slept deeply for a couple of hours, but woke suddenly at quarter-past-six. His little brother Josh was still fast asleep and Neil looked at his watch in disbelief. After all that had happened, after his complete exhaustion, he was now, unaccountably, wide awake and no amount of burying his head under the warm blankets could make him doze off again.

Climbing out of bed, he dragged on some clean clothes and crept out into the living room. To his relief, he found that his father was finally sleeping, and the boy silently left the apartment to look for Quoth.

He did not have to roam far to find him. The raven was roosting in The Fossil Room, which opened off from the passage. With his head tucked under one wing, the bird sat upon one of the display cabinets, making faint purling noises in his sleep. In fact, his slumber was so profound that Neil managed to walk straight up to him without the raven waking.

The boy did not have the heart to disturb his rest. Quoth looked so contented there, in his dim little corner, that he almost tiptoed away again.

At that moment, however, a sudden pounding resounded within the museum and the raven was startled awake. With his scruffy feathers askew and his head wiggling drunkenly up and down, the bird stretched open his beak and fixed his eye upon his surroundings.

‘Good morning,’ Neil greeted him.

‘Fie!’ Quoth squawked in alarm. ‘The hammers of the underworld doth strike! Alarum! Alarum!’

‘I think it’s just someone at the door,’ the boy chuckled.

The bird rubbed the sleep from his eye and stared at Neil with dozy happiness.

‘Squire Neil!’ he croaked, slithering across the glass in his haste to salute him. ‘The argent stars of heaven’s country are but barely snuffed in their daily dowsing, yet already thou art astir! Good morrow, good morrow, oh spurner of Morpheus!’

Neil laughed and stroked the bird’s featherless head. ‘I’m sorry about what happened last night,’ he apologised. ‘Were you okay out here?’

‘This lack-a-bed sparrow hath nested in more danksome grots than this.’

‘Once an idea gets into Dad’s head there’s nothing anyone can do,’ Neil explained. ‘With any luck he’ll have calmed down by tonight.’

Again the knocking sounded and Neil held out his arm for Quoth to climb up to his shoulder.

‘We’d better see who that is.’

‘Good tidings ne’er rose with the dawn,’ the raven warned in his ear.

Through the collections they hurried, until they came to the main hallway, and Neil pulled the great oaken door open. To his surprise, he found the Chief Inspector waiting upon the step.

‘What’s happened?’ the boy asked, instantly fearing the worst.

‘Nothing yet,’ Hargreaves reassured him. ‘I’ve come on an errand – Urdr commanded me.’

Neil peered past him and saw, standing in the alleyway, the fidgeting figure of Austen Pickering. The boy recognised him immediately. The pensioner had stopped him in the street after school a few days ago, and warned him of the dangers of living in The Wyrd Museum. Neil had not forgotten those forbidding words and it made him uneasy to see this little man again.

‘A plainer pudding this nidyard ne’er chanced to espy,’ Quoth reflected, regarding the man with his beady, yet critical, eye. ‘’Twas a poorly craft which didst shape yonder lumpen clay.’

The Chief Inspector coughed awkwardly but added in a whisper, ‘I brought him as soon as I received the message from Urdr. I was to bring Mr Pickering here. It’s not my place to ask why.’

‘But that’s the ghost hunter,’ Neil muttered. ‘I don’t understand. What can she want with him?’

‘If you would be civil enough to allow the gentleman inside,’ a clipped voice rang out from the hallway, ‘you might be able to learn.’

Neil turned and Quoth chirped morosely. Upon the stairs, looking as regal and supreme as any empress, Miss Ursula Webster stood gazing down on them. At her side, in contrast to the old woman’s tall, stately figure, Edie Dorkins looked like a Thames-scavenging mudlark. Her oval face was smudged with dirt, her clothes were torn and wide holes gaped in her woollen stockings.

Hargreaves lowered his eyes in reverence and bowed to both. ‘I have done what was asked of me—’

‘Is there an outbreak of deafness?’ Miss Ursula demanded. ‘I said for you to let the man inside!’

Hastily leaving the entrance steps, the Chief Inspector permitted Austen Pickering to take his place, and Neil looked at him keenly.

It was obvious that the man was fighting to remain calm, but he was so excited that his breaths were shallow and gasping. With his already large-seeming eyes widening behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, he came to the arched doorway and placed his stubby fingers upon the bronze figure at his left.

Timidly, he stared in at the museum’s gloom-laden interior and took another gulp of air, as if he were swigging a measure of whisky for courage. Then, with an acknowledging glance at Neil, the man calmed himself. He had been longing for this moment for so long that he wanted to cherish it in his memory ever afterwards.

‘First impressions,’ Neil heard him mumble to himself. ‘I must be free to receive all I can. Come on Austen, old lad – be the blank paper, the empty jug, the untrodden snow.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ Miss Ursula called. ‘Be quick to enter.’

Half-closing his eyes, Austen Pickering stepped purposefully over the threshold and drew a deep, rapturous breath. For several moments he stood quite still with his head tilted back, and Neil began to wonder if the old man had gone into a trance.

But the peculiar silence did not last, for Mr Pickering presently opened his eyes and looked gravely about him.

‘Yes!’ he sighed. ‘I was right. But so many – hundreds upon hundreds. I never dreamed!’

‘What is it?’ Neil asked.

‘Most incredible!’ the man exclaimed. ‘I never expected so staggering a number. Quite astounding.’

Neil exchanged looks with the Chief Inspector, but Hargreaves’ hollow-cheeked face was solemn and the boy couldn’t guess what he was thinking.

Her chin resting upon the banister, Edie grimaced and took an instant dislike to the strange newcomer. Everything about the man’s bearing and attire suggested the strict, military discipline with which he ordered his life. What was left of his tightly waved hair was too neatly combed, a veritable knuckle of a knot secured his regimental tie in place, and his brown brogues shone like chestnuts freshly popped from their casing.

During her untame life in the bomb sites, Edie had spent too long distrusting and evading the figures of authority who had tried to catch her to abandon those natural suspicions now. To her, this fastidious little man was no different from the countless air-raid wardens she had hated; Austen Pickering wore his clothes like a uniform and she despised him for that fact alone.

Forsaking him in revolt, she looked to see what Miss Ursula made of him and was intrigued to read in the old woman’s face a considerable degree of approval.

‘You admire my museum?’ Miss Ursula said suddenly.

Mr Pickering turned to her and peered over the rim of his glasses. ‘Admire is not the word I would have chosen, Madam.’

‘That is to be expected,’ she said. ‘From the many letters I have received from you, I would have been sorely disappointed if you had not felt the pulse of life which courses through this building.’

‘Pulse of life!’ the man spluttered in disbelief. ‘I assure you, Madam, that it is the pain of the anguished dead which I feel – and that most deeply.’

The taffeta of Miss Ursula’s black gown rustled faintly as she stirred and gripped the banister rail a little tighter. ‘Tell me what it is that you sense,’ she commanded. ‘When you walked through that door – what was it like?’

The ghost hunter knitted his brows and in the grave tone he reserved for these matters said, ‘The atmosphere is electric – charged like a battery. No, more like a dam that is close to bursting. If nothing is done to release the pressure then I cannot begin to imagine what will occur. The tension is unbearable.’

Casting his gaze about the dim entrance hall, from the small window of the ticket booth to the drab watercolours which mobbed the panelled walls, he tapped his fingertips together and nodded grimly.

‘I’ve never been in so ancient a place. It’s staggering. How many trapped souls are locked in here? How many poor unfortunates have never been able to break free of its jealous clutch?’

But Miss Ursula had heard and seen enough for the time being. ‘That will be for you to discover,’ she told him. ‘I wish your investigations to commence at once. The caretaker’s son shall guide you around the museum. If there are tormented souls locked in here, you have my permission to do whatever you please with them. Now, close the door – the draught is intolerable.’

Neil glanced apologetically at the Chief Inspector who was still waiting outside, but Hargreaves was not in the least bit offended.

‘Close it, I say!’ Miss Ursula commanded.

Hargreaves moved away from the entrance. ‘I’ll be around should you need me,’ he called to Neil as the boy reluctantly pushed the door shut. ‘Urdr knows, those of us who are left will be here.’

The oaken door shuddered in its frame and Neil glared up at the imperious figure upon the stairs.

‘There’s no need to be so rude!’ he shouted.

But Miss Ursula had her back to him and was already ascending to the first floor. Giving the stranger a final suspicious glance, Edie Dorkins pulled an impudent face and capered after her.

Austen Pickering could only shake his head in disappointment. ‘Sad want of manners,’ he murmured.

‘Ignore them,’ Neil began. ‘They’re both bats.’

The old man regarded him for a moment. ‘I’ve come across worse. There’s no escaping it in my field of study. When you talk about phantoms and the unquiet dead to people, it seems to bring out the worst in them. I’ve been called more names than I can remember, but so long as the job gets done, they can call me twice as many again.’

Pausing, he looked at the raven sitting upon the boy’s shoulder and winked at him in amusement. ‘That’s a dandy specimen you’ve got there, lad,’ he said peering at the bird with interest. ‘However did you come by him?’

Quoth held his head up proudly whilst the man viewed him and turned his head so that his best side showed.

‘Vain little beggar, too,’ Mr Pickering observed.

‘He that be a foe of beauty is an enemy of nature,’ the raven retorted.

The man started and looked at Neil, as though suspecting him of ventriloquism. Then he laughed and removed his spectacles to polish the lenses. ‘A long time I’ve been waiting to get inside this place,’ he declared. ‘I told myself I’d have to expect all kinds, but I wasn’t counting on a talking raven to be my first surprise.’

Returning his glasses to their rightful place upon his nose, Austen Pickering smiled happily. ‘This is birthdays and Christmas all come at once,’ he explained to Neil. ‘I hardly know where to start. It’s like being given one enormous present, but too excited to peep inside the wrapping paper.’

Walking towards the door which led to the ground floor collections, he rubbed his hands together with an almost childlike glee. ‘You don’t have to show me around if you don’t want to. I’d be perfectly content to wander about on my own.’

‘No,’ Neil replied. ‘I’d like to. What you said about there being trapped souls in here … do you mean it’s haunted?’

At once Mr Pickering grew serious again. ‘Can you doubt it?’ he cried. ‘You who live in this revolting building?’

‘I believe you – honest I do,’ Neil assured him, and his thoughts flew to his friend Angelo Signorelli.

When the Chapmans had first come to stay in The Wyrd Museum, Neil had encountered the soul of that unfortunate American airman in The Separate Collection. There, in one of the display cabinets, Angelo’s spirit had been imprisoned for over fifty years, locked within the woolly form of a shabby old Teddy bear. Together, they had journeyed back into the past to save the life of Jean Evans, the woman Angelo had loved. But Ted had chosen to remain in that time and Neil still missed him.

Addressing Austen Pickering again, Neil asked, ‘When I saw you that time, out in the street, you said this place was like a psychic sponge – that it trapped souls and kept them. What you did just then, when you came in – are you psychic?’

The man stared at him. It was unusual for anyone to accept the things he said, but this boy was doing his best – even trying to understand. ‘I’m blessed with a very modest gift,’ he murmured. ‘From the moment I stepped inside this horror, I felt the unending torture of those who should have crossed over but are still bound to this world. This place has known untold deaths during its different roles throughout the ages.’

‘I know that it used to be an insane asylum.’

‘Oh, it’s been a lot more than that, lad. I’ve done my homework on this miserable pile of bricks, researching back as far as the scant records allow. Orphanage, a workhouse for the poverty-stricken silk weavers, before that a pest house and going even further back – a hospital for lepers. Think of all the suffering and anguish these walls have absorbed. No one can imagine the number of hapless victims that this monstrous structure keeps locked within its rooms, condemned to wander these floors for eternity. The poor wretches have been ignored for far too long.’

Clapping his hands together, he raised his voice and announced in a loud voice which boomed out like that of a drill sergeant. ‘Well, I’m here now – Austen Pickering, ghost hunter. Here to listen to their cries and, no matter what it takes, I’m going to help them.’