CHAPTER 4

HAND IN GLOVE

Sara Falk crouched in front of the trembling young woman and smiled encouragingly at her.

“Lucy,” she said.

Lucy Harker just stared at the door through which Mr Sharp had led Ketch, as if expecting them to walk back in at any moment.

“Lucy. May I?”

She reached for Lucy’s neck, pushed away the hair, and then lifted the collar of the pinafore as if looking for something like a necklace. Finding nothing she sucked her teeth with a snap of disappointment and shook her head.

The eyes stayed locked on the outer door. Sara Falk moved into her field of vision.

“Lucy. You must believe the next three things I tell you with all your heart, for they are the truest things in the world: firstly, that man will never walk back through that door unbidden and he shall never, ever hurt you or anyone ever again. Mr Sharp is making sure of that right now.”

Lucy’s eyes flickered and she looked at the slender woman, her eyes making a question that her mouth could not, her body still tense and quivering like a wild deer on the point of flight.

“Secondly, I know you have visions,” continued Sara Falk, reaching out to touch the pitch-plaster gently, as if stroking a hurt away. “It’s the visions that make you scream. Visions you have when you touch things. Visions that make you wonder if you are perhaps mad?”

The eyes stared at her. Sara smiled and raised her own hands, showing the gloves and the two rings that she wore on top of them, one an odd-shaped piece of sea-glass rimmed with a band of gold, the other set with a bloodstone into which a crest of some sort had been carved.

“You are not mad, and you are not alone. As you see, others have reason to cover their hands too. And if you come with me into my house where there is a warm fire and pie and hot milk with honey, we shall sit with my glove box and find an old pair of mine and see if they fit you.”

She removed the rings, reached for the buttons at the wrist of one glove, quickly opened them and peeled the thin black leather off, revealing the bare hand beneath. She freed the other hand even faster, and then reached gently for Lucy’s bound hands.

“May I?”

Lucy’s eyes stayed locked on hers as she gently began to unwrap one of the hands.

“I have something that will calm you, Lucy, a simple piece of sea-glass for you to touch, and I promise it will not harm you but give you a strength until we can find you one of your own—”

Lucy pulled her hand sharply away but Sara held onto it firmly and smiled as she held out the sea-glass ring: the glass, worn smooth by constant tumbling back and forth on a beach matched Sara Falk’s eyes perfectly.

“You need to touch this—”

Lucy goggled at it, then ripped her hand out of Sara Falk’s, shaking her head with sudden agitation, emphatically miming “No!”

“Lucy—” began Sara, and then stopped.

Lucy was tearing at her own bandages, moaning excitedly from behind the tar and hessian gag. It was Sara’s turn to watch with eyes that widened in surprise as the rags wound off and revealed their secret.

Lucy freed one hand and held out a fist, palm up, jabbing it insistently at the older woman.

Then she opened it.

Clenched in her hand was another piece of sea-glass, its light hazel colour like that of Lucy’s own eyes.

Sara Falk’s face split into a grin that matched and made even younger the youthful face she carried beneath the prematurely white hair. It was a proud and a mischievous grin.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, you clever girl. Clever, clever girl! You kept your own heart-stone. That’s how you survived that awful man unbroken! Oh, you shall be fine, Lucy Harker, for you have sense and spirit. The visions that assault you when you touch things are a gift, and though it is not an easy one to bear, believe me that it is a gift and no lasting blight on your life.”

A tear leaked out of one of Lucy’s eyes and Sara caught it and wiped it away before it hit the black plaster.

“And this heart-stone, I mean your piece of sea-glass, does it glow when there is danger near?”

Lucy again looked startled and on edge, as if she was on the point of breaking for the door. Sara put a hand on her shoulder, gently.

“Did you know that only a true Glint can see the fire that blazes out of it when peril approaches?” said Sara. “Ordinary folk see nothing but the same dull piece of sea-glass. Why, even the estimable Mr Sharp who has abilities of his own cannot see the fire that guards the unique power that you and I have. It is not glowing now, is it?”

Lucy looked at the dull glass in her hand; it was like a cloudy gobbet of marmalade.

“Then if you trust it, trust me,” said Sara. “And we shall find a way to soften that pitch and peel this wretched gag off without hurting you. Come to the kitchen and we shall see what we can do.”

She smiled encouragingly at the gagged face. Her grandfather had indeed once sought out oddities like Lucy Harker and other people with even stranger abilities. The Rabbi Falk had been one of the great minds of his time, and though not born with any powers of his own, he not only believed in what he termed the “supranatural” but also toiled endlessly to increase his knowledge of it and so harness it. He had been a Freemason, a Kabbalist, an alchemist and a natural scientist, obsessively studying the threads of secret power that wove themselves beneath the everyday surface of things and underpinned what he called “The Great and Hidden History of the World”.

It was perhaps proof that Fate had a sense of humour in that his granddaughter had been born with some of those very elusive powers which he had spent a lifetime searching for and trying to control.

Sara reached for Lucy’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“You are a Glint, Lucy, and you have fallen among friends,” she said. “You are out of danger here, for this is the Safe House, the most secure house in all London, safer than the Tower itself for it was made so to guard a grave secret, a key of great power, and because of that you can rest, secure that none may enter unless I let them, and so none shall harm you. Now come with me, for you are cold and the kitchen is warm and altogether more welcoming.”

With that Sara led Lucy from the room so that all that remained was the echo of their footsteps walking away down a stone-flagged passageway, and the sound of her voice saying, “The third thing you must believe, Lucy Harker, is that the world in general, and London in particular, is a far, far stranger place that most people ever know.”

And as if to prove that fact to the empty room, the hollow clay mannequin stood up, walked across the room and quietly closed the door behind them, before returning to his seat and sitting as motionlessly as before.