Part 13 (1/2)

A thrill pa.s.sed through her. There was another explanation she could imagine. The gate had been locked, but it had been opened without breaking it and without the benefit of a key. Logic left but a single alternative. It was magick that had opened the gate. And that meant...

”They've been here,” she said, taking the key from the lock.

Now her excitement became dread. If the magicians had been here, perhaps they already had what they wanted!

She willed herself to be calm. Reason dictated that if they had already gained the thing, then they would not have come to the door at Whitward Street that night. Which meant that, whatever they sought, it must still be here. Ivy hurried up the walk.

The house was larger than their dwelling on Whitward Street. The front part alone was broader and just as tall, and there were a pair of wings off either side. Nothing grew in the yard save thistles and a few hawthorn trees that clung with little resolve to shriveled leaves. A pair of stone lions reclined to either side of the door, baring their teeth in mossy yawns. Ivy remembered that she used to talk to them and had even given them names, though what they were she could not remember. She reached out to stroke a stony mane.

Ivy s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back. A feeling that she was being watched came over her, but of course it was nonsense. The iron fence was coiled thick with tendrils of her namesake, screening her from the street. As for the house, no one could be watching her from that direction. The windows were all shuttered and barred.

She approached the front door. It was carved from a ma.s.sive slab of oak and bound by iron. It might have done for a door in an old fortress on a hill, a thing to keep barbarians at bay. As a girl she had barely been able to push it open on her own. She took out the key and set it to the lock.

It didn't fit.

Ivy could only stare. This was something she had not foreseen. However, after several failed attempts, there could be no doubt. The key was too large and not shaped right, and no direction she turned it made a difference. It would not fit in the lock. All these years she had a.s.sumed this was the key to both the gate and door at Durrow Street, but she had only been half right. And where the key to the house might be, she hadn't the faintest idea.

Ivy pushed on the door, but unlike the gate it did not open. She tried the handle, but it, too, resisted her will. No one had pa.s.sed this way.

They had tried, however. Ivy examined the iron plate; a circle of silver marks was arrayed around the lock. The lines were finer, fainter, as if this metal had been less easily scored than that of the gate. Her disappointment was tempered: she could not get in, but neither could they. And the key to the door had to be in her father's possession. She had only to find it. Hope was thwarted, yes, but far from lost.

There was nothing more she could do here. While her visit to Durrow Street had not given her the result she had hoped for, Ivy could not say it had been useless, for she had seen evidence that confirmed her theory: the magicians had sought something here.

”And I will discover what it is,” she told the lions. She patted their muzzles, then headed back into the yard.

Slowly but surely the sun was making its way westward toward a bank of gathering thunderheads. However, she took a few minutes to walk around the house to make a survey of the rest of the yard and also to be sure none of the bars over any of the windows had been prized loose.

Nothing had been disturbed, as far as she could see, and as she finished her circuit she let out a sigh. There was something affecting about the silent house, about the shabby gardens and the twisted little trees. It was forlorn, but there was a sort of peace about it as well. Though the city lay just beyond the ivy-twined fence, for all she could hear it might as well have been miles away and this place a house on a far-off moor in the country.

Ivy had never been out of the city in all her life, and the fancy was so captivating that she let herself half-believe it for a moment. She plucked a twig from a stunted chestnut, twirling it in her hand as she shut her eyes. She listened to the murmur of the leaves and pictured herself in the country near some little patch of wood-not a copse of New Forest, tall and evergreen, but an ancient stand of twisted trees: a remnant of primeval forest, like the deep woods into which Queen Beanore had vanished a long age ago.

Somewhere pigeons warbled, breaking the power of the spell. Ivy let the twig drop from her fingers and opened her eyes.

A man stood in the gate.

Such was her astonishment that she could not move. That she should run occurred to her, yet that action-indeed, any action-was beyond her. A paralysis had seized her.

The man wore black-that it was a man she did not doubt, for he was tall, if unusually slender-and her heart fluttered as she wondered if it was one of them, if they had known she would come here and had watched for her. Only he did not wear a cape as they had. His attire was strange: a collection of frills and ruffles and ribbons, of gored sleeves and pantaloons and a broad-brimmed hat. She had seen drawings of men in such garb in books of plays. It was like a dandy's attire from another century, or like a harlequin's costume. Only black, all black, from head to toe-even his face, which was covered by a black mask. It was a smooth and lacquered thing, neither laughing nor smiling, devoid of any expression or feeling. A death mask.

Who are you? she tried to call out. However, he made a slight motion with a black-gloved hand, and the words cleaved to her tongue.

Still, Ivy could not move. She could only follow with her gaze as he entered the yard, as he walked among the trees with a capering step and up to the front door of the house. He patted the lions. They stretched and licked his fingers with gray tongues.

Ivy felt herself swooning, only she did not collapse; she was a rod planted in the ground. A shadow fell upon the yard as the clouds thickened overhead. The man reached toward the door, then withdrew his hand. He turned, and now the mask was wrought in a black grin.

”The way must not be opened,” he said.

At least, she believed he said this. For she could not see his lips move behind the mask, and she was not certain she heard the words so much as she felt them impinge upon her mind, like something read in a book.

Why? she wanted to ask him. But her mouth would not open.

He moved from the door and descended the steps.

”They have forgotten,” he said, drawing near. ”Or they choose not to remember.” He snapped a bit of branch from a hawthorn and twirled it in his hand, just as she had done. ”In their arrogance and their desire they will try to open it. You must not let them.”

Who will try to open it? she strained to ask, and could not.

All the same he answered her. ”They call themselves the Vigilant Order of the Silver Eye. They have been watching you. One day they will come, and when they do-”

He hissed and dropped the twig. A red drop fell from his hand; a thorn had bitten him through the glove. In that instant, Ivy found her tongue.

”What will they do?” she cried. ”Who are you? And why should I listen to you?”

He curled his fingers into a fist. ”You should listen to me,” he said in a low voice, ”because that is what your father did.”

The mouth of the mask was shaped in a grimace now.

Ivy tried to ask him how he knew her father, when they had spoken, and what had been said, but at that moment a clap of thunder sounded and a wind sprang up. Dust and dried leaves filled the air, and she was forced to turn her back to the gale. At last the wind subsided. She turned back and blinked to clear her eyes.

There was no one else in the yard. The iron gate swung on its hinges, then creaked to a halt. The lions grinned at her, things of motionless stone.

I T WAS LATE in the afternoon by the time Ivy walked through the door at Whitward Street. The driver had let her off Downhill, for her funds had been scant (the fare being more than she had expected) and he refused to go the entire way. As a result she had been forced to walk the last mile through a downpour as the clouds let loose in a violent torrent.

Though it was Ivy who was s.h.i.+vering and wet, it was Mrs. Lockwell who was in a state of distress upon her arrival. Where had Ivy been for so long? Did she not know Mr. Rafferdy's carriage would be here in only two hours? What could she possibly have been doing all this time?

Ivy gripped the packet of lace and started into the story she had formulated. She needn't have bothered. The future was of far too great a concern to Mrs. Lockwell for her to consider the past.

”What a state you are in!” she despaired. ”How will you be made to look presentable in so short a time? Your hair will need five hundred strokes if it needs one. And if you do not have a scalding bath at once, you will catch your death. Now, up the stairs with you!”

Thus was disposed any notion of Ivy resting quietly for a few hours before the party.

The bath was taken-gratefully, for she felt chilled after her dash through the rain-and thereafter ensued an hour's worth of tugging, pulling, fussing, and arranging. At last Mrs. Lockwell p.r.o.nounced she could do no more, and as she surveyed herself in the looking gla.s.s, Ivy could not deny that her appearance was good. Rather than marring her complexion, the exertion of the day had heightened her color and brought out a vividness in her eyes, which made them a match for the gown she wore.

The dress had been Mrs. Lockwell's in her youth. It was a rich thing, made from Murghese silk that glittered like sun on leaves. Over the last few days Rose had carefully brought it in to match Ivy's size, and Lily had taken off the sleeves and retied the ribbons to give it a more fas.h.i.+onable appearance.

”Look at you, Ivy!” Mrs. Lockwell exclaimed, her despair quite forgotten. ”I was no older than you when I last wore that dress. It was at the ball where I met your father. How I loved to dance! I could dance all night in those days and still beg the musicians to play. If I had known I would never have the occasion to wear it again, I might have refused your father's proposal. But it came so quickly, as did your brother. After that my figure was never the same, and then there were so few b.a.l.l.s to attend. So few.”

Her mother's voice faltered. Ivy looked at her with concern. Mrs. Lockwell seldom mentioned their brother, who had died soon after a difficult birth and nearly took his mother with him. For many years after that it was thought Mrs. Lockwell would never bear another child. But then came Ivy, and a few years later Rose and Lily all in a hurry, and so their little garden flourished after all.

The moment pa.s.sed. Mrs. Lockwell gripped Ivy's hands and p.r.o.nounced that all eyes would be upon Ivy the moment she stepped through the door. Ivy, in contrast, hoped it was the case that no one would notice she was there. Though if she were to win a glance from him, she supposed she would not mind.

After that there was nothing to do but sit in the parlor and try not to wrinkle her dress. It was difficult to stay still. Despite how long she had been awake that day, Ivy was anything but tired. After her encounter at the house on Durrow Street, her mind was abuzz with thoughts. Only she did not know what to think-except perhaps that she should be in terror. Yet she was not. She had gone there hoping to meet someone who knew her father, and she had.

But who was the man? And why did he affect such a peculiar costume? She was certain he was not one of the two magicians who came to the front door that night, though he had spoken as if he knew them-rather, as if he was at odds with them.

An urge came upon her to run upstairs, to go to Mr. Lockwell, to ask him about the man in the dark mask. But he could not answer her questions, and at that moment Lily, who had been sitting by the window, cried out, ”The carriage is here!”

Rose gasped at the sight of the cabriolet drawn by a handsome gray, and Lily was at once exultant for her sister and anguished that she was not going herself. She demanded that Ivy catalog a whole host of details-everything that was worn, and said, and eaten, and danced, and whether Mr. Garritt was there, and how he looked, and if he asked about her. Then Ivy was kissing her sisters, and gripping her mother's hands, and hurrying out into the purple evening.

The driver helped her into the cabriolet. While she could not help feeling a note of disappointment to find the seat beside her empty, she could not say she was surprised. He had said he would send the carriage for her, not that he would come himself.