by ‘So you need this key.’ Valerie tapped a pen thoughtfully against her lips, a characteristic gesture. I said nothing, letting her think in peace. I have great confidence in Val. She always comes up with something. ‘I wonder why Milady has custody of it,’ she said at length.
A good question, one I had not really considered. ‘The Society’s entire existence is about protecting rare old stuff, isn’t it?’
‘Might be reason enough.’ She thought some more, her eyes straying to the books on the far shelves. ‘The House predates Milady by quite a margin, of course. I wonder why Alban is so certain Milady is keeping the key.’
A faint suspicion entered my head. ‘Predates? By how far?’
She nodded, following my train of thought perfectly — or perhaps I was following hers. ‘The House’s precise date of construction is not known for some reason, but a few particular architectural features have led me to conclude that it was built somewhere around the early 1660s. Give or take a few years.’
‘And the decline of Farringale took place in 1657! Or so Milady said.’
Val’s eyes narrowed. ‘That was unusually forthcoming of her.’
‘Wasn’t it? I have no idea what came over her.’
‘It makes sense that those three keys were hidden away sometime fairly soon after the close of the Enclave, which was probably somewhere in the 1660s. Is Milady personally keeping the third key, or was it given to the House?’
‘Given… to the House?’ I was sceptical, I couldn’t help it. ‘Come on, Val. I know it’s an odd House and rather more aware than most Houses are, but still. It doesn’t have a mind, exactly, or a consciousness the way we do—’
‘Doesn’t it?’
It might have been a coincidence, but something creaked in the library just then. I don’t mind admitting that it gave me the chills. ‘All right,’ I said, prepared to accept the possibility, for what was ever normal about the Society? ‘But if House has got it, that’s a problem. If I couldn’t persuade Milady to let me have it, I… have no idea how to convince a seventeenth-century country mansion.’
Valerie smiled. ‘House can be very helpful, if it likes you.’
I cast a slightly trepid glance at the stately shelves nearby, and the graceful ceiling arching far overhead. ‘How do I know if it likes me?’ I whispered.
‘I wouldn’t worry, Ves. You are very likeable.’
‘That’s comforting.’
She sat back, eyeing me speculatively. ‘I will tell you a secret about the House. Maybe it will help.’
I blinked. ‘Wait. There are secrets about the House that you haven’t told me?’
‘Yes, but we can wrangle about that later. Is this urgent or not?’
‘Sorry.’
Out came the secret. ‘House has a favourite room. Few have seen it, for it is so well hidden, you really have to know that it’s there in order to find it at all. And I don’t think House likes visitors in there too often, so it doesn’t exactly help you out if you go looking for it. But it’s there, somewhere near the heart of the building. A sitting room, prettily decorated, and as far as I can tell it’s unchanged since the sixteen hundreds. I believe it most likely belonged to whoever built this House, and House keeps it just the way it is.’
‘Fantastic,’ I breathed. ‘So you’ve been inside it?’
‘Twice.’ She did not elaborate, and I didn’t push. ‘Anyway, if you go there, I think House might listen to you. And if it does… well, House and Milady are usually in accord with one another, but it wouldn’t be the first time they have disagreed.’
‘Dear Val, you are a jewel in the Society’s crown.’
She smirked. ‘I know. Got some paper? The directions are a little convoluted, you’ll want them written down.’
She wasn’t kidding. I left the library a few minutes later with a sheet of notepaper in my hand, both sides of it mostly covered in Val’s flowing handwriting. According to the directions, there were at least three times as many staircases at Home than I had ever seen or imagined, and far more corridors than the place should reasonably have room for. Not that this should have surprised me either. I had more than once suspected that the House was somewhat larger on the inside than its exterior would lead a person to expect.
Val’s route started, helpfully, from the library, but I soon began to feel that I was lost. I trotted along several winding corridors, up a few twisting staircases and down several more. At first I knew exactly where I was, but after a while I realised I recognised nothing that I saw around me. When I opened an occasional door to take a peek inside, I saw rooms I had never seen before either.
This frankly flabbergasted me. I had lived for more than a decade in that House, and I’d been comfortable that I knew it inside out. How could so much of it have been hidden from me all that time? And what else was there that I still did not know about?
It grew quieter as I walked, a clear sign that I was travelling farther and farther away from the House’s centres of activity. There was a stillness to the air that made me feel very alone, and my footsteps rang out, crisp and sharp, echoing off the aged stonework.
And then the corridor ended. I turned a corner and saw before me nothing but uninterrupted stone walls and a clean stone floor — curiously free of dust and debris, for all its remote atmosphere. There were no windows, no doors, no stairs; no way out at all, except back the way I had come.
I consulted Val’s directions again, to no particular avail. Honestly, the sense of giving a woman like me so complex a list of directions and expecting me to traverse them without getting lost! For an instant I suspected Val of playing a trick on me, but dismissed the idea. She would not. Her faith in my ability to find my way through this maze of a castle must be rather higher than my own.
Turn left, said the last of Val’s notes, which I had just done. Turn left… and then what? I considered calling her to ask, but dismissed that idea, too. She hates to have ringing phones around when she’s reading, and would undoubtedly have switched hers off.
I felt my way along the walls for a while, checking for hidden doors, stones that might obligingly slide aside to reveal secret staircases, that kind of thing. No luck there either.
I chose a corner at the end of the corridor and sat down with my back against the stone wall, surveying the empty passageway before me with some dismay. How could I be so inept? The answer was probably obvious, so obvious that it had not occurred to Val that I might need help. Jay would have got it in an instant, and treated my confusion with that faint but distinct disbelief I have sometimes detected in his eyes. I could have called him, but my pride revolted against that idea.
‘Well, House,’ I said aloud as I hauled myself back to my feet. ‘Your secrets are safe from me.’ I walked back along that puzzling corridor and turned right, following Valerie’s directions backwards.
Memory is a strange thing, is it not? I remember names, dates, faces and all manner of minute details with the greatest of ease, but I am not so well able to recognise places I have already been. So it took me much longer than it should have to realise that the passageway I was walking down was not the same one I had traversed perhaps half an hour before. The great stone blocks that made up the walls were limestone of a slightly different shade, and cut a little on the smaller side. The air smelled faintly of chocolate, which I had not noticed before. When I passed a gilt-framed painting of an eighteenth-century landscape I did not remember seeing before, I was certain I had gone wrong.
My stomach fluttered with nerves at finding myself so much at a loss, for I had clearly strayed from Val’s directions and had no idea where I was. If I became hopelessly turned about in House’s twisting corridors, would it consent to rescue me? I could be lost for hours. Days.
But then there was a door. It obtruded itself upon my notice so suddenly as to arouse my suspicions. Had it been there a moment before? Was I so oblivious as to have missed it? It looked innocuous enough: an ordinary-sized door painted bright white, with a single, large pewter knob set into the centre.
‘All right, then,’ I muttered, game to try anything that might get me out of that mess of a maze. I grasped the knob, finding it strangely warm under my hand, and turned it.
And there it was: House’s favourite room. It could only be that, for before me lay a perfectly preserved parlour whose fittings and furniture clearly proclaimed its provenance. The wallpaper was prettily figured with scrolling flowers, all rosy and lavender and ivory in hue; three elegantly-curved seventeenth-century chairs had been upholstered to match, in handsome ivory silk; portraits in oval frames hung upon the walls, and an exquisite old grandfather clock occupied one corner. It was still ticking, its pendulum keeping time with a drowsy, soothing sway.
A little white tea table stood in the centre, atop which sat a silver chocolate pot not wholly unlike Milady’s. A puff of steam drifted from its spout as I stepped over the threshold, and a cup appeared beside it.
‘Is that for me?’ I said.
The pot puffed steam again, which seemed a clear enough response. So I settled into the nearest chair — carefully, carefully; one is used to treating antique furniture with great care. But these chairs, while they had obviously been much used and loved, displayed none of the frailty or decay they ought to have accumulated over the better part of four hundred years.
I took a moment to examine the portraits, idly curious as to whether I might recognise any of the faces depicted therein. I did not. They were ladies and gentlemen for the most part, sumptuously garbed in the silk and lace gowns, the elaborately curled wigs, the velvet coats and jewelled extravagance of the sixteen hundreds. There were one or two exceptions, however. I saw a young, dark-skinned man clad in much simpler garb, his expression earnest and intense. On the other side of the room, a little girl in a plain dress played with a doll; next to her portrait hung that of an elderly woman wearing an eighteen-thirties day dress and a wide straw bonnet, smiling in the sunlight of a bright spring day.
‘Dear House,’ I began, setting down my empty cup. ‘Thank you for the chocolate, you are always such a gent. Or a lady, it’s… hard to tell. I have come to entreat your help. May we talk?’
It felt odd, sitting alone in that eerie little parlour out of time, literally talking to the walls. But a faint creak of assent answered my question to the apparently empty air — or at least, I took it as assenting. Nothing leapt out to cut me off, or to hustle me out of the room again. And so I began.
