Everything on the third floor was quiet, apart from the swish of a broom as one of the cleaning women began to sweep the floor of the corridor. I walked past her and went straight to my dorm. I pushed the door open, then stopped in amazement. Someone was crouching over the small cupboard next to my bed, going through all my private stuff. It was Harriet.
“What the…?”
Lying in a heap on the bed were my letters from Dad, my precious photographs from home, and several sheets of paper covered with small black script—Agnes’s writing. Her journal had been ripped to pieces and scattered like leaves in the wind.
“Hey! Stop! What do you think you’re doing?” I rushed over to Harriet and dragged her away from my things.
“I wanted to find my necklace,” she whined. “Someone told me it was you who took it for a joke that time it went missing.”
I stared at Harriet in total disbelief. “Why on earth would I do that? Of course I don’t have your necklace! Who told you that?”
“Celeste. She said she’d seen you hide it in your cupboard.”
“Celeste? Celeste?” I stormed. “You chose to believe her after everything I’ve done for you?” All my fear and grief boiled up and poured out like poison. “How dare you touch my things without asking me? And look what you’ve done to this book—that was totally irreplaceable. I’ll never forgive you for this!” I gathered the pieces of Agnes’s diary together with shaking hands and tried to smooth out the torn pages. Harriet sat on the bed, her shoulders slumped and her head bowed.
“I’m sorry, Evie. I don’t know what made me do it.” She began to complain self-pityingly. “I really don’t feel right: I hear things; I can’t sleep. There’s this voice in my head all the time—”
“Oh, be quiet!” I snapped. I had never, ever been so angry.
“But, Evie…”
I marched out of the dorm, still shaking with rage. I had never liked this girl; I had forced myself to be kind, to help her, and how had she repaid me? After all that stuff about wanting to connect with Agnes and wanting to be friends with me and being lonely and voices in her head—it was a pile of self-indulgent, attention-seeking garbage, and I had had enough. She ran after me.
“Please, Evie, I need to tell you. It’s getting worse. I’m scared….”
“Leave me alone!”
“But I need to talk to you, and you said I could—”
I whirled around and glared at her, hating her timid, sallow face and her scared-looking eyes. “I never want to talk to you again.”
“What do you mean?” she said, looking shocked.
“Exactly what I said. Go and find someone else’s stuff to trash, Harriet, because I don’t ever want you coming anywhere near me again. Is that clear?”
Her mouth drooped and her dull skin became flushed with red blotches. She looked crumpled and useless and utterly pathetic. I felt my anger begin to cool, but she burst into tears and pushed past me, then ran clumsily down the marble stairs.
“Harriet, wait…”
It was too late. She was gone.
I felt sick with exhaustion, and secretly ashamed of myself. Then I remembered the torn journal that I was still clutching, and a wave of self-pity washed over me. I couldn’t face going down to the classroom. I hurried over to the curtained alcove that led to the secret stairs and shut myself into the old servants’ quarters, cut off from the rest of the school. Feeling my way in the dark, I crawled up the narrow steps to the attic and let myself into Agnes’s secret study. Then I sat at her desk and laid my head on my arms, and allowed myself to leave this world as I fell into the embrace of a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. For an instant I thought I was back at home in the cottage, but as I groped to light a candle that stood on the desk, I remembered everything. The burden of unhappiness settled onto me again like a great weight. I sat staring at the dancing candle flame, and realized there was nothing I could do about the way I felt. I had to live like this now, with this pain. My hands shook and my eyes were sore and my guts ached, but I had to go on living. I had to eat and sleep and study and be with people. There was no alternative. I had read books and magazines about girls who “couldn’t live” without their perfect boyfriend, but I knew that it wasn’t like that. Even when you’re so unhappy that nothing is real, life doesn’t stop.
I looked around the little room crammed with Agnes’s possessions and wondered if I would ever come up here again. The jars of herbs and candles and secret ingredients hadn’t given me what I had been looking for. The Mystic Way had failed me, or perhaps I had failed the Mystic Way. I found a piece of bright silk on one of the shelves and wrapped the torn fragments of Agnes’s journal in it. I didn’t need it anymore. As I opened the drawer of the desk to hide the little bundle away, I remembered that we had hidden the Book there too. I hesitated, then picked up the heavy, leather-bound volume. The silver letters on the cover seemed to glow like slivers of moonlight. A way of healing and power…I needed healing so badly. I flicked through the pages and the Book fell open of its own accord. I saw an image of an angel, side by side with a hooded skeleton. The Gift of Death…
For one terrible instant, the memory of Harriet lying crumpled at the bottom of the marble steps flashed into my mind. I could choose to leap down to those mesmerizing black-and-white tiles, throwing myself away like a sacrificed pawn in a great game of chess. Then the pain would be over. I would never hurt again. I shut the Book roughly and thrust it into the drawer with Agnes’s journal.
No. I would never do that. That would not be the end of my story. I had to go on living, however much it hurt, just as Sebastian now had to face his fate. I glanced at my watch. I had slept through the day. It would be dark outside, the darkest night I had ever known. The new moon would rise like a silver promise. At midnight Sebastian would pass into the shadows forever, and there was nothing I could do about it. I stood up and slowly made my way downstairs, back to school. Back to reality.
Sarah and Helen were talking quietly by the fire in the entrance hall when I reached the bottom of the marble steps. They looked up anxiously and drew me over to the glowing hearth. “You’re so cold!” Sarah said. “We told the staff you’d gone to the nurse with a headache this morning. Hopefully they won’t check up on it. Oh, Evie, we’re so sorry—”
The great front door suddenly blew open, and a blast of wind and rain spattered across the threshold. A storm was brewing outside, and the trees were swaying in the driving wind.
“Close that door, Evie!” said Miss Hetherington, who was passing through the hall. “It’s going to be a wild night.” I shut the door as she told me, but not before I glimpsed the slender arc of the moon, riding high behind the scudding clouds.
We hung about aimlessly, then went to the library, hoping to find somewhere quiet to sit together before the bell rang for bedtime. I was thankful that the library was empty, and I remembered vaguely that there was a music recital being held in the school that evening. I guessed most of the students had gone there after dinner.
“You haven’t eaten all day, Evie. You’d better have some of this.”
Sarah passed me a bar of chocolate. I wasn’t hungry, but I tried to eat some to please her while Helen stared abstractedly into space. There was nothing to say, nothing to do, nowhere to go. It was like waiting for bad news at a hospital, or sitting by the telephone and dreading that it would ring. As each minute passed, a tiny voice in my head started to drone. Are you really just going to sit here? There’s still some time left. Time enough for a miracle. Time to do something.
There’s nothing I can do, I answered myself wearily, but the voice started up again in a never-ending circle. But are you really just going to sit here? There’s still time…time…time….
The clock in the library chimed nine. I woke from my reverie. I noticed that the sound of the wind outside had grown, until it was like an angry beast prowling around the school. There was a muffled crash. Sarah looked up. “Sounds like slates falling off the roof. It’s a really bad storm.”
The door of the library opened and a young girl came in, blinking and looking about her. I recognized her as a girl in Harriet’s form. “Um…are you Evie Johnson?”
“Yeah.”
“Then this is for you.” She handed me a folded note, then scurried out again. An almighty crash of thunder rattled the building, and the lights flickered and went out. We could hear the sounds of startled screams and shouts in the corridors and distant rooms as the school was plunged into complete blackness.
“It’s a power outage,” said Helen. “Hang on.” She rummaged in her bag and found her little flashlight and switched it on. “That’s better. I guess the staff will organize candles and stuff until the power comes back on.”
“Should we go and see if they need any help with the young kids?” asked Sarah. “Some of them might be scared.”
“Wait, let me read this note first.” I held it under Helen’s flashlight and scanned the scribbled words.
Dear Evie,
After what you said this morning I can’t go on. The voices in my head are getting worse. I don’t know how to go on living. Do you remember I said I wanted to go out into the hills and fall asleep in the snow and never wake up? The snow has gone but it is still cold by Agnes’s grave. I have a knife. They say you only have to make a tiny cut and it is enough; then you wait for the end to come. Good-bye. I will not bother you again. I’m sorry I let you down.
Harriet Templeton
“Oh, God…” I could hardly believe it. I felt faint as I read the note again, trying to make sense of it all. Harriet couldn’t go on…. Now I bitterly regretted the harsh words I had spoken to her. But how could I have known she would get so desperate? “Oh, my God…we’ve got to do something. I’ve got to help her.”
“Should we call the police?” asked Helen, her eyes round and anxious in the torchlight. “Or a doctor or someone?”
“The phone lines will be down with the power outage,” said Sarah. “What about the staff, one of the mistresses—”
“No!” I said. “There’s no one we can trust. They don’t care about the girls, anyway, and explaining it to them will only cause more delay. We’ll have to go ourselves. If Harriet has only just left we might be able to stop her before she does anything stupid. We can get her back to school before anyone knows anything about it, what with all this confusion in the storm. Then we’ll get in touch with her mother somehow. That’s who she really needs.”
Suddenly, I needed my mother too. Please help me, I prayed silently, as we hurried down the unlit corridors to one of the many side entrances. We passed a cloakroom and grabbed some coats at random from the pegs, then plunged outside. The rain lashed into my face, and the icy wind took my breath away. The storm was raging all around us as we raced toward the long drive that led to the wrought-iron gates and the village beyond, where the grave of Lady Agnes lay under the yew trees in the churchyard. All the brave messengers of spring that had been announcing themselves in the last few days—the tiny green shoots, the first trembling new leaves—would be torn to pieces that night. Please let us be there in time, I begged. I hadn’t been able to save Sebastian, but perhaps I could at least reach Harriet, poor sad Harriet with her sick and fevered mind.
As soon as we were out of sight of the school, Helen enfolded us in her powers, and a moment later we arrived at the lonely churchyard. The black trees swayed in the wild wind, and the little cottages in the village beyond were wrapped in darkness.
“Harriet? Harriet!”
The only answer was the sobbing of the wind and the groaning of the trees.
Passing the rows of slanting tombstones, we hurried to where a single grave was set slightly apart from the others. It was an old-fashioned tomb of stone, surmounted by a statue of an angel. The angel’s face had worn away over the years, and now it looked down with a blank expression, holding a scroll carved with a simple inscription:
LADY AGNES TEMPLETON,
BELOVED OF THE LORD
Harriet was standing in the rain with her back to us, staring at the angel. And slumped at the foot of the statue like a dying man, looking up at her in horror, was Sebastian.