Louise looked at the high stone wall of the west wing, sizing it up. What would Joshua do in a situation like this? She thought about the layout of the wing, the family apartments, the servants’ utility passages. Rooms and corridors she knew better than anyone except for the chief housekeeper, and possibly Daddy.
She took Genevieve by the hand. “Come on. We’ll try and get up to Mother’s boudoir without anyone seeing us. She’s bound to go there eventually.”
They crept out into the courtyard and scuttled quickly along the foot of the manor’s wall to a small green door which led into a storeroom at the back of the kitchens. Louise expected a shouted challenge at any moment. She was panting by the time she heaved on the big iron handle and nipped inside.
The storeroom was filled with sacks of flour and vegetables piled high in various wooden bays. Two narrow window slits, set high in the wall, cast a paltry grey light through their cobweb-caked panes.
Louise flicked the switch as Genevieve closed the door. A couple of naked light spheres on the roof sputtered weakly, then went out.
“Damnation!” Louise took Genevieve’s hand and threaded her way carefully around the boxes and sacks.
The utility corridor beyond had plain white plaster walls and pale yellow flagstones. Light spheres every twenty feet along its ceiling were flickering on and off completely at random. The effect made Louise feel mildly giddy, as if the corridor were swaying about.
“What’s doing that?” Genevieve whispered fiercely.
“I’ve no idea,” she replied carefully. A dreadful ache of loneliness had stolen up on her without any warning. Cricklade didn’t belong to them anymore, she knew that now.
They made their way along the disconcerting corridor to the antechamber at the end. A cast-iron spiral staircase wound up through the ceiling.
Louise paused to hear if anyone was coming down. Then, satisfied they were still alone, she started up.
The manor’s main corridors were a vast contrast to the plain servant utilities. Wide strips of thick green and gold carpet ran along polished golden wood planks, the walls were hung with huge traditional oil paintings in ostentatious gilt frames. Small antique chests stood at regular intervals, holding either delicate objets d’art or cut crystal vases with fragrant blooms of terrestrial and xenoc flowers grown in the manor’s own conservatory.
The outside of the door at the top of the spiral stairs was disguised as a wall panel. Louise teased it open and peeped out. A grand stained-glass window at the far end of the corridor was sending out broad fans of coloured light to dye the walls and ceiling with tartan splashes. Engraved light spheres on the ceiling were glowing a lame amber. All of them emitted an unhealthy buzzing sound.
“Nobody about,” Louise said.
The two of them darted out and shut the panel behind them. They started edging towards their mother’s boudoir.
A distant cry sounded. Louise couldn’t work out where it came from. It wasn’t close, though; thank sweet Jesus.
“Let’s go back,” Genevieve said. “Please, Louise. Mummy knows we went to the stables. She’ll find us there.”
“We’ll just see if she’s here, first. If she’s not, then we’ll go straight back.”
They heard the anguished cry again, even softer this time.
The boudoir door was twenty feet away. Louise steeled herself and took a step towards it.
“Oh, God, no ! No, no, no. Stop it. Grant! Dear God, help me!”
Louise’s muscles locked in terror. It was her mother’s voice—Mother’s scream—coming from behind the boudoir door.
“Grant, no! Oh, please. Please , no more.” A long, shrill howl of pain followed.
Genevieve was clutching at her in horror, soft whimpers bubbling from her open mouth. The light spheres right outside the boudoir door grew brighter. Within seconds they glared hotter than Duke at noon. Both of them burst apart with a thin pop , sending slivers of milky glass tinkling down on the carpet and floorboards.
Marjorie Kavanagh screeched again.
“Mummy!” Genevieve wailed.
Marjorie Kavanagh’s scream broke off. There was a muffled, inexplicable thud from behind the door. Then: “RUN! RUN, DARLING. JUST RUN, NOW!”
Louise was already stumbling back towards the concealed stairway door, holding on to a distraught, sobbing Genevieve. The boudoir door flew open, wood splintering from the force of the blow which struck it. A solid shaft of sickly emerald light punched out into the corridor. Spidery shadows moved within it, growing denser.
Two figures emerged.
Louise gagged. It was Rachel Handley, one of the manor’s maids. She looked the same as normal. Except her hair. It had turned brick-red, the strands curling and coiling around each other in slow, oily movements.
Then Daddy was standing beside the chunky girl, still in his militia uniform. His face wore a foreign, sneering smile.
“Come to Papa, baby,” he growled happily, and took a step towards Louise.
All Louise could do was shake her head hopelessly. Genevieve had slumped to her knees, bawling and shaking violently.
“Come on, baby.” His voice had fallen to a silky coo.
Louise couldn’t stop the sob that burped from her lips. Soon it would become a mad scream which would never end.
Her father laughed delightedly. A shape moved through the liquid green light behind him and Rachel.
Louise was so numbed she could no longer even manage a solitary gasp of surprise. It was Mrs Charlsworth, their nanny. Variously: tyrant and surrogate mother, confidante and traitor. A rotund, middle-aged woman, with prematurely greying hair and an otherwise sour face softened by hundreds of granny wrinkles.
She stabbed a knitting needle straight at Grant Kavanagh’s face, aiming for his left eye. “Leave my girls alone, you bloody fiend,” she yelled defiantly.
Louise could never quite remember exactly what happened next. There was blood, and miniature lightning forks. Rachel Handley let out a clarion shriek. Shattered glass erupted from the frames of the oil paintings down half the length of the corridor as the blazing white lightning strobed violently.
Louise crammed her hands over her ears as the shriek threatened to crack open her skull. The lightning died away. When she looked up, instead of her father there was a hulking humanoid shape standing beside Rachel. It wore strange armour, made entirely of little squares of dark metal, embossed with scarlet runes, and tied together with brass wire. “Bitch!” it stormed at a quailing Mrs Charlsworth. Thick streamers of bright orange smoke were belching out of its eye slits.
Rachel Handley’s arms turned incandescent. She clamped her splayed fingers over Mrs Charlsworth’s cheeks, teeth bared in exertion as she pushed in. Skin sizzled and charred below her fingertips. Mrs Charlsworth mewed in agony. The maid released her. She slumped backwards, her head lolling to one side; and she looked at Louise, smiling as tears seeped down her ruined cheeks. “Go,” she mouthed.
The grievous plea seemed to kick directly into Louise’s nervous system. She pushed her shoulders into the wall, levering herself upright.
Mrs Charlsworth grinned mirthlessly as the maid and the burly warrior closed on her to consummate their vengeance. She raised the pathetic knitting needle again.
Ribbons of white fire snaked around Rachel’s arms as she grinned at her prey. Small balls of it dripped off her fingertips, flying horizontally towards the stricken woman, eating eagerly through the starched grey uniform. A booming laugh emerged from the clinking armour, mingling with Mrs Charlsworth’s gurgles of pain.
Louise put her arm under Genevieve’s shoulder and lifted her bodily. Flashes of light and the sounds of Mrs Charlsworth’s torture flooded the corridor behind her.
I mustn’t turn back. I mustn’t.
Her fingers found the catch for the concealed door, and it swung open silently. She almost hurled Genevieve through the gap into the gloom beyond, heedless of whether anyone else was on the stairs.
The door slid shut.
“Gen? Gen!” Louise shook the petrified girl. “Gen, we have to get out of here.” There was no response. “Oh, dear Jesus.” The urge to curl into a ball and weep her troubles away was strengthening.