The Creature who came into the room was cleaved in half straight down the middle, so that one half of it had one eye and one eyebrow, one nostril, one ear, one arm, one leg, one foot, and the other half had just the same.
Well, nearly just the same, because as if the Creature did not astonish enough, one half of it was male and the other half of it was female. The female half had a bosom, or certainly half a bosom.
The Creature appeared to be made of flesh, like a human being, but what human being born is cleaved in half?
The Creature’s clothes were as odd as the Creature itself.
The male half wore a shirt with one sleeve, and a pair of breeches with one leg, and where the other sleeve and other leg should have been, was a cut-off and sewn-up side. The Creature had a sleeveless leather jerkin over his shirt, and his jerkin had not been altered in any way, so it looked as though half of it was unfilled with body, which was true.
Beneath the breeches, or perhaps the breech, as the garment must be called, having one leg and not two, was a stocking fastened at the knee, and a stout leather shoe on the bottom of the stocking.
The Creature had no beard, but wore in his single ear a single gold earring.
Its other half was just as bizarre. This lady wore half a skirt, half a chemise and half a hat on her half of the head.
At her waist, or that portion of herself which would have been a waist, dangled a great bunch of keys. She wore no earring, but her hand, more slender than the other, had a ring on each finger.
The expression on either half of the face was disagreeable.
‘Seven water rats came out of a drain,’ said the Male.
‘And none of ’em went back in again . . . ha ha ha!’ said the Female.
‘They must work harder!’ said the Male.
‘Or nothing from the larder!’ said the Female.
The Creature then hopped swiftly into the room, and instead of standing as one, divided itself into its two halves, each half hopping madly around the room in opposite directions, and beating the boys over the head. Jack hid himself behind the alembic, but he was soon discovered.
‘The Seventh is the one to watch!’
‘Master’s new catch!’
And the two stood balefully in front of Jack, swaying slightly to keep their balance.
‘What are you?’ said Jack.
‘He wants to know What Are You!’ said the Female, laughing, and as she laughed, Jack saw she had but one tooth in her head.
‘The Creature Sawn in Two!’ said the Male. ‘Yes we are, yes we are, yes we are.’
‘Who sawed you in two?’ asked Jack.
‘Master, that’s who. Made us in a jar then split us like we are.’
‘What’s your mother and father, then?’ asked Jack.
‘Ha, mother’s a bottle and father’s a fire,’ said the Female.
‘Like breeds like, desire breeds desire,’ said the Male.
Jack wondered what they were talking about, but he was only asking questions because he was so scared that he wanted time to steady himself so that he would know what to do next. The metal door was open, and he was half thinking of making a run for it. His eyes must have given him away, for in an instant, the Female was hopping off to close it with a clang, while the Male said, ‘Half a thought is worse than none.’
And the Female answered, ‘Least said, less done.’
Jack’s heart clanged shut like the door, but he found courage, and said, ‘Have you names?’
‘My name is Wedge. She who you see is Mistress Split.’
‘That’s it!’ cried she.
They smiled – that is, each end of their half-mouth rose towards each ear, like someone reaching for an apple on a branch too far away.
‘Pleased to meet you, Jackster, I’m sure I’m not,’ said Mistress Split.
‘Another silly boy locked away and forgot,’ said Wedge.
‘You won’t get away, not if you try all your life.’
‘And if you try, there’s always the knife!’ said Mistress Split, pulling from the folds of her skirt, where her other leg should have been, a knife the length of a sword. ‘There’s advantages to a one-legged being.’
Suddenly Wedge grabbed Jack by the neck and with powerful strength forced him to his knees.
‘But what advantage to a no-headed being? Eh, Jackster?’
With a laugh and a push Wedge threw Jack on to the floor. Mistress Split kicked him, and with a gasp and an ouch Jack saw that her shoe had an iron toe and an iron heel. He didn’t move.
The Creature(s) hopped away, yelling at the boys, and laughing their high maniacal laugh; then, as Jack stayed where he was, he heard the metal door open and shut, followed by the hopping noise of what he would come to learn as the iron shoe.
As soon as the Creature(s) had gone, Robert came over to Jack and helped him on to a barrel and gave him water to drink. Anselm fetched him a piece of bread and cheese. Jack realised he was starving.
‘Beware of them, Jack,’ said Robert. ‘They have no pity and great strength. The Magus made them before we came here.’
‘Yes,’ said Anselm. ‘He made them and they were one, like we are one, but they tried to disobey him and as a punishment he tore them in two. Now they are full of fear of him and hate of everyone.’
‘They will never show you any mercy or any kindness, none,’ said Robert.
‘When he made them, were they at once a male and a female?’ asked Jack, finishing his bread.
‘Yes, it was a great wonder,’ said Peter.
‘What is their purpose?’
‘To spy on us, and to keep us here. They know everything,’ said Robert.
‘What of the other servants? The ones in grey?’
‘All too afraid. They do not speak to us.’
‘We will escape,’ said Jack. ‘I promise you I will find a way.’
Robert shook his head sadly. ‘Before you came, we were seven, and the seventh tried to escape.’
‘What became of him?’
Robert stood up from the barrel and gestured at Jack to follow. He went towards the back of the laboratory and opened a door. The room beyond was very dark, except for a row of candles which seemed to be burning in front of some statues.
‘Are these statues from the Catholic churches or the monasteries?’ asked Jack, who knew that King Henry the Eighth, the king before Elizabeth had become queen, had made England a Protestant country and had all the statues taken out of all the Catholic churches. Some people had taken the statues and hidden them in their houses, some because they continued in secret to be Catholics, and some because they were sorry to see the old and colourful ways disappear, with their statues of saints and virgins. They were, after all, someone to talk to, and many an ordinary wife missed her quiet talks with a statue that she would swear seemed to speak.
Robert shook his head. ‘They are the ones who Disobeyed.’
‘Hear what he says?’ said William. ‘DISOBEYED!’
Jack ignored his stare, and went closer to look at the statues.
They were life-size, and life-like. Only a master carver could have made anything so like a human being.
‘They were human beings,’ said Robert.
And Jack noticed the sad expressions on their faces – very sad and very surprised. Two had their mouths a little open, as though they had been about to speak.
A boy, very like Jack in height and build, stood silent and upright at the end of the row. Jack put out his hand and touched the boy’s face. Yes, the boy was stone. Stone-hard and stone-cold. No sun could warm him now.
‘We light the candles here,’ said Peter, ‘so that they are not always in the dark.’
‘Are they alive inside the stone?’ said Jack. ‘Or are they all stone?’
‘No one can tell,’ said Robert. ‘And their lips are stone, so they cannot tell.’
Jack ran his finger over the boy’s lips, and felt something like infinite sadness, but whether it was his own sadness, or that of the stone boy, he could not tell.
Back inside the laboratory, the boys finished sawing and stacking the wood. They built up the furnace and drained and filled the liquids. They seemed cheerful at their work, for, as Robert explained, the laboratory was the only place in the Dark House that was warm, and it was the only place that was not grey. Here in the colour and warmth, and the light flowing down from the windows set in the roof, the boys were as free and as happy as they could be. There was water too, so they were not thirsty, and they were fed bread and cheese at noon and bread and broth at four o’clock, and they ate it sitting by the furnace, talking and joking and playing games. They hated the dark dormitory, and the silent fearful seven o’clock breakfasts, after the long tramp down and down the stairs, Wedge in front, Mistress Split behind. At seven every evening they were summoned for supper, the Magus sweeping through the refectory like a dark wind.
It was evening, and growing dark outside. Wedge came hopping in to the laboratory and herded the boys to their stations in the long refectory. There was a large round loaf on the table, and a cooked leg of mutton. Mistress Split pulled her sword from her skirt and brought it down, SLICE!
WHOOSH! SLICE! WHOOSH! Mutton and bread flew in the air and landed about the table, while the boys fetched their pieces and ate it, all the while listening to the mad rhymes and manic laughter of the Creature(s).
‘What rhymes with Loaf?’
‘Oaf!’
‘What rhymes with Mutton?’
‘Glutton!’
The two sat at the head of the table, so close together that they were nearly one. Each ate noisily, snatching food from the other, and cramming it into their half-mouths. Jack had once seen a snake with two heads that could only feed and not starve if one head was distracted by a twig or a nail while the other head ate. If not both heads spat and snarled so much that neither could swallow.
And Jack thought that perhaps the way to defeat these two that were one that were two, was to turn them against each other.
As he thought this the Magus entered the room, and Jack forced himself not to think at all.
At the end of the meal the boys were marched upstairs and locked into the stone room with the stone beds. The moon herself, usually so soft and kind, seemed made of stone that night, her light hard and held.
One by one the boys fell asleep, but Jack did not fall asleep. He lay awake, thinking of his mother and his little black dog, and he thought he heard, far off, his dog barking.
Somehow he would get away.