“All night! Why didn’t you bring someone else?”
“Whew, what a journey! I’m done for,” he cried, ignoring my question. He struck a pose and waved imperiously at the footmen on the step. “Bring my mother to me and let her feed me cherry cake and wine,” he cried, quoting from an old poem of war and heroism.
“I think I can hear her now,” I said, listening to the hubbub that had arisen in the house. Eff’s exuberant voice carried a long way. “She sounds almost pleased. What can she see in you, I wonder?”
“My genius, of course,” laughed Bright. “Carry the trunk up to Marm Shine’s room,” he told the hovering footmen. “Graceson, see to it. Now Shine darling,” he added loudly, “I’m trusting you to dole out only two of the books in that trunk to Mother every week. Otherwise she’s going to get through them too fast.”
He winked at me and I managed to nod and smile without looking too mystified. “Quite the intriguer, aren’t I?” he whispered, so that I finally realised that we were supposed to be pretending that the trunk was full of books. Well, that would stop the servants snooping, I supposed; Eff’s favourite books were powerfully dull tomes about politics and peasant rights.
Bright turned and shambled away up the stairs as Auntie Eff came bursting out of the front door and rushed down the steps, laughing and extending her arms.
As usual, her white hair was coming loose from its bun and sticking out in a wispy halo around her face. She had both sets of spectacles on again. Today her work tunic and pants were covered in flour. I loved Auntie Eff, but no one could ever call her elegant.
“Darling mother, you’ve lost weight,” cried Bright, hugging her. Thank the Lady—he didn’t know the half of it.
“Pish! I could say the same for you, horrible boy,” cried Eff, laughing, kissing him all over his face and surreptitiously wiping her eyes. With a painful flutter in my chest, I realised that it was the first time I’d seen her laugh since Bright’s disgrace. “And stop quoting poetry. You know there are no cherries at this time of the year. Come on. Tell me everything you’ve been doing. Oh, you’re filthy. Come, you must have a bath while you tell me what you’ve been up to.”
Cherry cake may have been absent, but there was wine and Bright was soon being plied with all sorts of other dainties that had been prepared for the Blessing party. I left them alone and ran upstairs to my room. I met Graceson coming down.
“Want to come back and hide in my room?” I asked, knowing that he would be trying to avoid Auntie Eff, who blamed him for Bright’s inversion.
“I’ll wait for him in the stable,” he said.
“Stefan,” I asked, as he turned to go. “Do you ever hear from your brother?”
“Still in the army, I think,” said Graceson. “I don’t know where. If I see him, I’ll give him your best wishes, shall I?”
I went up the rest of the stairs, filled with curiosity and trepidation at the thought of dealing with the ghost on my own. Also excitement. I loved to hear about new places, and nowhere was as unknown as Ghostland.
The trunk was sitting open and empty at the foot of my bed.
“Outlander,” I called softly as I closed the door behind me. “It’s me, Marm Shine.”
“Here,” called a voice and the ghost slid out from under the bed, clutching a little orange and blue backpack that was definitely of foreign make. He slid right into Katti, who had been peering under the bed at him.
“Sha, Sha, Sha,” he said in his funny language. “She’s huge.”
He smells very fearful, thought Katti. I fear I am too magnificent for him.
Smug old Katti. I refrained from reminding her of her terror when the ghost had first appeared. Cats have very sensitive pride.
“Don’t worry,” I told the ghost. “She’s big for a hunting cat, but she’s very friendly to people. She won’t hurt you unless you hurt her first. Or me. I’m her cub as far as she’s concerned. I’m afraid you may be spending a lot of time together.”
I helped him up off the floor. He was my height, bigger than the few outlanders I’d glimpsed before. The strangest thing was his hair, which was the colour of straw.
He must have known cats, because he politely offered Katti his hand to sniff, before tentatively reaching out to stroke her head. He wore rough cotton miner’s clothes. I brushed the fluff and dust off his back. He had lovely muscles, but the pale skin... Argh!
“You have not got anywhere better I can hide? In case someone comes in?”
“Looks like you’d be safe under the bed. Clearly no one ever goes under there. And Hilly promised me they’d swept everywhere. But come...”
I pulled aside a screen to reveal a wardrobe built in to the wall and pushed aside the clothes. “There’s this.” I opened the narrow secret cupboard in the wall behind the rack.
“This is nice,” he said, looking at the little seat.
“It’s a lover’s hide.”
“A what?”
“Lots of these old houses have little secret cupboards for lovers in the wardrobes,” I said. “I don’t know how ghosts are, but Empire men get can be very tiresome about each other, so sometimes it’s simpler that they not meet. Saves all that pointless chesting and fighting.”
The ghost stared at me wide-eyed. Then he shook himself and said, “So anyone looking for me would guess this cupboard was here?”
“Possibly. Probably,” I conceded.
“Do you have anywhere else?”
“Why would anyone come looking for you?”
“Your cousin didn’t mention that we were attacked on our way here? Someone wanted me dead so badly that they set on your cousin’s phaeton. Bright’s co-driver held them off while we escaped.”
That explained why Bright pushed himself so far and so fast, without another mage to take turns at propelling the phaeton. But would the attack have been personal? The roads were full of bandits and rogues.
“Well, they’re not going to come and get you here,” I reassured him. “Especially not during Blessing time. The place will be lousy with mages.”
“Please! You must believe me,” he said. Curiously, even though he was a complete foreigner whose feelings should have been a mystery to me, I could sense how real his fear was.
“Well, there is this,” I said. Beneath the window was a sliding panel triggered by pressure. In the wall cavity behind there was room for an adult to curl up, chin on her knees. I pulled out the little calico bag lying on the floor where once I’d hid my travel savings. It was empty now—the money spent on draining those new fields and a doctor for Eff. The empty feel of it in my hands made me sad and a sigh escaped me before I could stop it.
The ghost didn’t notice.
“So who knows this is here?” he asked.
“Me, Bright, Auntie Eff. Maybe Thomas and Hilly the housekeeper. This used to be my uncle Batty’s room, before he died. He had a weakness for Holy Wine, but sometimes he had terrible visions. He’d crawl in here when the hallucinations got too bad. Apparently the pressure of the walls helped. You press at the bottom like this to open it and it closes itself.”